Market Report – Asia Mixed Ahead of U.S. Futures

In today’s market report… Mixed results today in Asian share markets.

Hopes of a revival in U.S. consumer spending may have boosted some Asian stocks, but there was still caution ahead of a U.S. payrolls report.

Gold prices remained near $1,000 an ounce after an overnight rally. Shares of Australian miners and the Aussie dollar both benefitted from the high gold price.

Rio Tinto confirmed it had suspended iron ore price talks with Chinese customers.

Japan hit a five-week closing low as its second-biggest brokerage, Daiwa Securities, fell on news it plans to buy out Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group.

Shares in electronics maker Toshiba slid after reports they’ll bid more than $5.4 billion for the power distribution and transmission equipment unit of French nuclear group Areva.

In South Korea, Hynix Semiconductor Inc, the world’s second-largest memory chip maker, slumped almost 6 percent after a downgrade by Daewoo Securities. That helped drag the KOSPI lower.

(NTDTV)