Asian markets up on solid US NFP

FXstreet.com (Barcelona) - A quiet Asian session, with Japan out of the game once again, celebrating Children’s Day, and most equity indexes edging higher on Monday. Excluding South Korea’s Kospi (-0.10%), Mainland China’s Shanghai Composite (+1.14%), India’s Bombay Sensitive (+0.30%), Hong Kong’s Hang Seng (+1.03%), Indonesia’s Jakarta Composite (+1.06%) and Singapore’s Straits Times (+0.62%) added gains. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.47% the day before the RBA interest rate decision despite a contraction in retail sales by -0.4% (consensus of +0.2%) in March (MoM). HSBC China services PMI eased from 54.3 to 51.1 in April. Asian equity indexes were mostly boosted by the solid US nonfarm payrolls report published on Friday.

Futures for the German DAX 30 (+0.03%) and the French CAC 40 (-0.06%) are still quite flat ahead of the European session and Markit services PMI data around euro countries and EMU retail sales. At 13:00 GMT, ECB President Mario Draghi will speak.