Most of the Asian equity benchmarks are trading lower in the early deals on Friday, due to another lackluster performance overnight on Wall Street and sharp decline in crude oil prices. On the other hand, Chinese stocks jumped, as hopes for more measures by the government to stimulate the economy gave financial and construction stocks a boost. Among other markets in the Asia-Pacific region, Shanghai and Hong Kong are marginally higher. Meanwhile, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia are down with modest losses. Markets in Taiwan are closed on Friday in observance of Peace Memorial Day.
Nikkei 225 crumbled 35.74 points or 0.19% to 18,750.05 , KOSPI Index contracted 2.67 points or 2.67% to 1,990.41, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI dipped 4.27 points or 0.23% to 1,816.60, Straits Times declined 0.28 points or 0.01% to 3,425.90 and Jakarta Composite was down by 1.26 points or 0.02% to 5,453.54
On the flip side, Hang Seng surged 139.57 points or 0.56% to 25,041.63 and Shanghai Composite was up by 19.13 points or 0.58% to 3,317.49.