GOOD MORNING ASIA

On Monday, Asian indices mostly hovering near a 4-month high after Wall Street’s tepid pre-weekend performance. Also MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was basically unchanged.

Key points for the markets this week will be how the remaining U.S. corporate earnings releases turn out, and whether they are in line with recent upbeat data. While corporate earnings and fundamentals remain key, political developments, notably the U.S.-China trade situation, remain potential risk factors.

China’s financial markets are closed all week for the Lunar New Year holiday.

On Friday Wall Street finished on mixed notes , as optimism from a surge in January U.S. job growth was offset by a weaker-than-expected outlook from Amazon Inc that battered retail stocks. The Dow nudged up 0.26% while the Nasdaq shed 0.25%.

A U.S. Labor Department report on Friday showed nonfarm payrolls jumped by a stronger-than-forecast 304,000 jobs last month, the largest gain since February 2018.

That report, along with better-than-expected ISM manufacturing activity numbers for January, pointed to underlying strength in the world’s biggest economy.

The robust economic data triggered a sharp rebound in U.S. Treasury yields, in turn lifting the dollar. The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield was at 2.691% after climbing nearly 6 basis points on Friday to pull away from a four-week low of 2.619 percent earlier last week.

U.S. crude oil futures up 0.24% to $55.39 per barrel after surging 2.7% on Friday. Oil prices had rallied on the upbeat U.S. jobs report, signs that Washington’s sanctions on Venezuelan exports have helped tighten supply and data showing U.S. drillers cut the number of oil rigs.