SEOUL: Asian stock markets mostly drifted higher on Friday after Wall Street finished with modest gains.
KEEPING SCORE: Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.3 percent to 22,841.64 and China’s Shanghai Composite Index added 0.2 percent to 3,302.01. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index gained 0.4 percent to 29,982.17. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was the only market that went south. It fell 0.3 percent to 6,068.80. South Korean stock markets closed on Thursday.
WALL STREET: U.S. stocks finished with on Thursday, one day before the final trading day of this year. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 0.2 percent to 2,687.54. The Dow gained 0.3 percent to 24,837.51. The Nasdaq added 0.2 percent to 6,950.16. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks picked up 0.3 percent to 1,548.93.
OIL: Benchmark U.S. crude rose 34 cents to $60.18 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It rose 20 cents to settle at $59.84 per barrel on Thursday. Brent crude, which is used to price international oils, gained 35 cents to $66.51 per barrel in London.
CURRENCIES: The dollar declined to 112.76 yen from 112.88 yen while the euro strengthened to $1.1946 from $1.1945.
BITCOIN: The price of bitcoin rose 2.7 percent to $14,811.94 as of 3:36 a.m. GMT, rebounding from a slide, according to the tracking site CoinDesk.
