Japan, South Korea, China shares trade higher as other Asian stocks remain closed for Good Friday

Japanese, South Korean, and Chines shares traded higher on Friday while other Asian stocks, including Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia, were closed for a public holiday.

The Nikkei 225 in Japan rose 0.5% to 22,200.56 as a number of tech stocks posted gains, with Nintendo shares jumping 14.12%.

On Thursday, Chinese tech giant Tencent won an important approval to start selling the Nintendo Switch game console in China, one of the largest video games market in the world, Reuters reported. The Switch was first released in 2017. U.S.-listed Nintendo ADRs rose more than 12% in the previous session.

Shares of automaker Nissan fell 2.24% following reports that it will cut global production by about 15% for the current fiscal year ending March 2020.

Also in Japan, the Topix index added 0.12% to 1,616.93. South Korea’s Kospi index, meanwhile, trimmed gains to trade up just 0.11% at 2,216.15.

Markets in China traded higher: The Shanghai composite gave up some of its early gains to climb 0.63% to 3,270.80 while the Shenzhen composite gained 0.93% to 1,778.81.

The session in Asia followed overnight gains from Wall Street on the back of corporate earnings and economic data. American markets will also be closed on Friday due to Good Friday.

In the currency market, the dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of its peer, traded at 97.363, climbing from levels near 96.900 earlier in the week. The Japanese yen traded at 111.90 to the dollar, weakening from levels near 111.20 in the previous week.

Oil prices ticked up overnight following declines in crude exports from Saudi Arabia. Global benchmark Brent rose about 35 cents to $71.97 a barrel while U.S. crude was up 24 cents to $64.

Saudi crude oil exports fell by 277,000 barrels per day in February from a month earlier, Reuters reported. The world’s top oil exporter, and OPEC’s de facto leader, shipped 6.977 million barrels per day in February, which was down from the 7.254 million shipped in January.

Source: CNBC