Major stock markets in the Asia-Pacific region traded mostly with gains on Friday's session as the situation in Ukraine kept escalating, with Moscow's forces firing two missiles at Kiev during a visit by the UN general secretary Antonio Guterres.
On the economic front, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the country's producer price index for the first quarter of 2022 reached 4.9%, the strongest increase since December 2008.
The South Korean KOSPI Composite rose 0.81% at 4:30 am CET, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.68% at the same time. Simultaneously, the Australian S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.73%, as Japan's Nikkei 225 was closed due to the national Showa Day. On the Chinese mainland, the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index surged 0.24% at 4:15 am CET, while the Shenzhen Composite Index went up 1.15% at the same time. The dollar inched down 0.07% against the yen, selling for 130.7495 at 4:33 am CET.
