Energy Leads Wall Street Rally, Asian Markets Mixed

Major Asian stock markets were mixed overnight as they gave up some of their early morning gains Friday.

On Wall Street, a rally in battered energy shares led U.S. stocks to rebound on Thursday with the S&P 500 registering its biggest daily percentage gain since Dec. 4 and ending back above 1,900 in the heaviest volume day so far this year.

The S&P energy sector shot up 4.5 percent, its best percentage gain since late August.

Shares of Exxon Mobil XOM.N surged 4.6 percent, also the biggest percentage gain since late August, to $79.12, while Chevron CVX.N jumped 5.1 percent to $85.47, among the biggest boosts to the Dow and the S&P 500. U.S. CLc1 and Brent LCOc1 oil prices ended more than 2 percent higher. The SPDR Energy Select Sector exchange-traded fund XLE.P rose 4.3 percent.

In Asian markets, South Korea’s Kospi erased gains to trade down 0.45 percent, while Japan’s Nikkei 225, which was initially up by as much as 1.77 percent, trimmed gains to 0.21 percent. On Thursday, the Nikkei closed 2.68 percent lower.

The ASX 200 slipped into the red by 0.22 percent after trading up as much as 0.55 percent.

Chinese Shares Down

Chinese equities were lower, with the main Shanghai composite down 1.06 percent, while the Shenzhen composite fell 0.33 percent.

Before the market open, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) set the yuan mid-point fix at 6.5637, compared with Thursday’s fix of 6.5616. The dollar-yuan pair traded 0.04 percent lower at 6.5867.