Most of the Asian equity benchmarks are trading down in the early deals on Friday with commodity weakness persisting and a Fed interest rate hike looming on the horizon, investors seem to be adopting a cautious stance, heading into the weekend. China's Shanghai Composite index and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down as investors awaited a slew of Chinese data including retail sales, industrial output and fixed asset investment, due out this weekend. A report on China's foreign direct investment inflows is also slated for release later in the day. Meanwhile, the Japanese stocks rose for the first time in five days, helped by gains on Wall Street and a pullback in the yen's strength. Among the other Asian market, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea are down with modest losses.
Hang Seng dipped 148.71 points or 0.69% to 21,555.90, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI dropped 2.98 points or 0.18 % to 1,645.67, Jakarta Composite declined 40.67 points or 0.91% to 4,425.54, KOSPI Index crumbled 6.03 points or 0.31% to 1,946.04, Shanghai Composite slipped 29.26 points or 0.85% to 3,426.23, Straits Times decreased 2.60 points or 0.09% to 2,845.86, and Taiwan Weighted was down by 47.24 points or 0.57% to 8,168.93.
On the flip side, Nikkei 225 was up by 189.66 points or 1.00% to 19,236.21.