The South Korea stock market has closed higher now in three straight sessions, rising almost 45 points or 2.3 percent along the way. The KOSPI finished just above the 1,990-point plateau, and now traders are expecting a fairly limited range when the market opens on Friday.
The global forecast for the Asian markets is mixed with a tough of upside ahead of key payroll data from the United States later in the day. Comments from the Federal Reserve add to the desire to remain on the sidelines. Airlines and gold stocks may move higher, along with oil and networking companies. The European markets finished higher and the U.S. bourses were mixed but little changed, and the Asian markets are expected to split the difference.
The KOSPI finished sharply higher on Thursday following gains from the oil companies and industrial issues.
For the day, the index spiked 25.06 points or 1.28 percent to finish at 1,984.30 after trading between 1,977.32 and 1,993.88. Volume was 628.95 million shares worth 8.59 trillion won.
Among the gainers, LG Electronics surged 7.35 percent, while SK Innovation jumped 3.2 percent, LG Chem spiked 5.93 percent, Hyundai Engineering and Construction climbed 5.33 percent and Daelim Industries soared 5.73 percent.
The lead from Wall Street offers little guidance as stocks were lackluster on Thursday ahead of Friday's closely watched monthly jobs report, eventually ending the day mixed. Economists are expecting employment to increase by about 150,000 jobs in January, while the unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at 8.5 percent.
As a result, traders largely shrugged off the Labor Department's weekly jobless claims report, which showed that claims fell by more than anticipated in the week ended January 28. Jobless claims dipped to 367,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 379,000. Economists had expected claims to edge down to 370,000 from the 377,000 originally reported for the previous week.
A separate report from the Labor Department showed a slightly smaller than expected increase in labor productivity in the fourth quarter. At the same time, the report showed a bigger than expected increase in unit labor costs.
In addition, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told the House Budget Committee that the U.S. economy is on the mend but is not yet ready to stand on its own two feet without help from the Fed.
"Over the past two and a half years, the U.S. economy has been gradually recovering from the recent deep recession," Bernanke said in prepared testimony. "While conditions have certainly improved over this period, the pace of the recovery has been frustratingly slow, particularly from the perspective of the millions of workers who remain unemployed or underemployed."
Among individual stocks, shares of Qualcomm (QCOM) rose by 2 percent after the wireless chip maker reported better than expected first quarter results. The company also issued healthy second quarter and full year guidance. Allstate (ALL) also turned in a strong performance after the insurance company reported fourth quarter operating income that exceeded estimates, as catastrophe losses declined.
The major averages closed on opposite sides of the unchanged line, with the Dow posting a modest loss. While the Dow edged down 11.05 points or 0.1 percent to 12,705.41, the NASDAQ rose 11.41 points or 0.4 percent to 2,859.68 and the S&P 500 inched up 1.45 points or 0.1 percent to 1,325.54. Despite the mixed performance on the day, the tech-heavy NASDAQ extended a recent upward move, reaching its best closing level in almost seven months.
In corporate news, South Korean Computer memory chip maker Hynix Semiconductor on Thursday reported fourth quarter net loss of 239.89 billion won, compared with a net profit of 30 billion won a year earlier. Operating loss was 167.49 billion won, compared to a profit of 293.68 billion won in the previous year. Quarterly sales fell 7.2 percent to 2.553 trillion won from 2.751 trillion won in the year-ago quarter.
Also, South Korea's SK Telecom on Thursday reported that its fourth quarter net profit declined 61 percent to KRW196 billion from KRW502.5 billion a year earlier. Operating profit fell 35.7 percent to KRW329.45 billion from KRW512.2 billion in the prior year. Quarterly sales decreased 2.3 percent to KRW3.930 trillion from KRW4.023 trillion in the previous year.
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Market Analysis
June 05, 2026 16:18 ET A busy week for economic news flow saw a slew of reports being released that reflected the trends in the U.S. labor market. In Europe, economic growth and inflation data gained attention as the European Central Bank and Bank of England head for policy session later in the month. In Asia, the monetary policy session of the Indian central bank was in focus as the country, a major oil importer, reels under the pressures of a weaker rupee and rising inflation.