Stocks are trading lower ahead of the US jobs report

Asia Pacific markets were mixed on Friday as investors looked to US jobs report for Augusta leading indicator ahead of the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate decision later this month.

South Korea’s consumer price index rose slower than expected – 5.7% in August from the same period a year earlier, lower than the 6.1% forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll.

The Nikkei 225 In Japan it almost settled at 27,650.84, while Topix was down 0.27% at 1930.17. Hong Kong Hang Seng Index It is down 0.66% in the last hour of trading and Hang Seng Tech is down 1.28%.

in Australia , S & P / ASX 200 It closed down 0.25% at 6828.70. The Cosby In South Korea it lost 0.26% to 2409.41 and the KOSDAQ index fell 0.31% to 785.88.

Mainland China Shanghai boat Fractionally increased to 3186.48 and Shenzhen Component It was slightly lower at 11702.39.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.52% lower.

American crude And the Brent crude Expanded gains in afternoon trade, They rise more than 2% each.

Economists expect that 318,000 jobs were added in August, down from 528,000 jobs added in July, according to Dow Jones. The unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at 3.5%.

“All the focus today is on the payroll later tonight where [whisper] Tapas Strickland, an economist at the National Australia Bank, wrote in a note on Friday:

Overnight in the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 145.99 points, about 0.5%, to 3,1656.42. The S&P 500 rose 0.3% to 3,966.85, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.3% to 11,785.13.

CNBC’s Patti Doom, Sarah Main, and Tanya Machel contributed to this report.