Apr 29, 2022 12:00AM ET
By: AnalysisWatch
Asia-Pacific stocks were mostly higher on Friday morning. U.S. stock futures fell after after-hours losses in Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. dampened some of the optimism from the Wall Street rally.
China's Shanghai Composite was up 0.47% by 10:12 PM ET, while the Shenzhen Component rose 0.27%.
The Caixin manufacturing and service sector purchasing managers' indexes and the manufacturing and non-manufacturing purchasing managers' indexes will be released next week.
The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong fell 0.30%.
In South Korea, the KOSPI rose 0.86%, and in Australia, the ASX 200 gained 0.78%. Australia's producer price index rose 4.9% year over year and 1.6% quarter over quarter in the first quarter of 2022.
Japanese markets are closed for a holiday.
After Amazon forecasted a slowdown in sales growth and Apple warned of supply shortages, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 contracts fell, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 1%.Amazon shares fell 9% and Apple's 2% in extended trading, topping the S&P 500's best advance since early March 2022 in regular trading.
Meanwhile, the yen slowly recouped its losses after falling above 130 per dollar to a 20-year low, and the yuan weakened at a pace comparable to China's shock devaluation in 2015. The dollar weakened but faces its best week since 2021 as caution remains over an aggressive rate hike by the Federal Reserve.
In commodities, oil prices remained near $105 as investors assessed the possibility of a European Union ban on Russian crude due to the country's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Concerns about the war in Ukraine, the recent COVID-19 outbreaks in China, and tighter U.S. monetary policy continue to contribute to market volatility.
The latest U.S. GDP, released Thursday, unexpectedly contracted 1.4% quarter-over-quarter in the first quarter of 2022, the first contraction since 2020.