A pedestrian looks at an electronic quotation mark that shows the numbers on the Nikkei 225 index on September 11, 2020 in Tokyo.
Kazuhiro Nogi | AFP | Getty Images
SINGAPORE – Asia Pacific stock markets opened higher on Monday after a “big miss” in the US job report released on Friday.
The Japanese Nikkei 225 was up 0.85% while the Topix was up 0.89%.
In South Korea, the Kospi rose 0.51% while the Australian ASX 200 gained 0.67% in early trading.
The widely watched US job report for April was weaker than expected. The report showed that U.S. employers added 266,000 net pay slips last month and the unemployment rate rose to 6.1%.
But Wall Street reacted only slightly to the bad news. Overall, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.7% last week, while the S&P 500 was up 1.2%. Despite a 0.9% rally in the last session of the week, the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.5% over the same period.
“A major non-farm payroll mistake was another bad news is good news case for US stocks on Friday. The 266,000 rise would be extremely impressive in normal times, but it shocked the market that almost expected four times that number. “Analysts at the Australian bank ANZ wrote in a morning note.
Investors will be watching a number of data releases from Australia on Monday, including retail sales for March and Q1 and the NAB business confidence survey.
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