Asia-Pacific markets set to trade mixed after U.S. jobs report missed expectations

Asia-Pacific markets set to trade mixed after U.S. jobs report missed expectations

SINGAPORE — Stock markets in Asia-Pacific opened higher on Monday following "a big miss" in the U.S. jobs report released Friday. Japan's rose around 0.85%, while the Topix was 0.89% higher. In South Korea, the rose 0.51% while Australia's inched up 0.67% in early trade. The widely watched came in weaker than expected. The report showed U.S. employers added 266,000 net payrolls last month and the unemployment rate rose to 6.1%. But Wall Street had only a mild reaction to the bad news. Overall, the rallied 2.7% last week, while the gained 1.2%. Despite a 0.9% rally in the week's final session, the shed 1.5% over the same period. "A big miss for non-farm payrolls was another case of 'bad news is good news' for US equities on Friday. The 266k addition would in normal times be extremely impressive but it shocked the market that was expecting nearly four times that number," analysts from Australian bank ANZ wrote in a morning note. Investors will be watching for a number of data releases from Australia on Monday, including retail sales for March and the first quarter, as well as the NAB business confidence survey. Currencies and oil The fell 0.07% to