Equities in Asia mixed on concerns about US-China trade talks

Asian equity markets were mostly mixed on Friday following a weak lead from Wall Street as uncertainty increased over US-China trade negotiation.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 was up 0.39 percent to end at 22,928.50 points, with market players digesting a softer-than-expected core consumer price index.

According to government data, the National Core CPI rose 0.7 percent year-over-year in April, falling short from an estimated 0.8 percent and a previous 0.9 percent reading. The National CPI was down 0.4 percent compared to the previous month.

Japanese stocks were supported by the continous weakening of the US dollar against the yen, which makes Nippon products less expensive against international competitors.

Sydney’s S&P/ASX 200 gave up early gains to decline 0.11 percent by the end of the session, as loses in the materials and financial components offset gains in health care and energy.

In South Korea, the Kospi benchmark closed 0.50 percent higher, boosted by gains of heavyweight Samsung Electronics as well as steel industry names.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index was trading 0.50 percent higher by the time of this writing. The Shanghai composite rose 1.23 percent and the Shenzhen composite added 0.35 percent.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump told a group of reports that he doubts trade negotiations with China will come to a good end.

"Will that be successful? I tend to doubt it," said Trump in an appearance with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. "The reason I doubt it is because China has become very spoiled. The European Union has become very spoiled. Other countries have become very spoiled, because they always got 100 percent of whatever they wanted from the United States."

US and Chinese officials are currently discussing in Washington ways to ease the rising tension between both nations in terms of trade policy. An escalation of this conflict could lead to a trade war, which would damage both economies and therefore, weigh on global economic growth.

In other news, the Indonesian rupiah fell to its weakest level in a two and a half years despite the local regulator opted to raise interest rates on Thursday.

No big data releases are scheduled for the day. In the US, traders will keep an eye on several FOMC speakers, including Mester (07:00 GMT), Brainard and Kaplan (13:15 GMT).

FortFS