The U.S. stock market was closed overnight. The heavy non-farm payrolls data for June will be released on Friday night. Traders are waiting for the non-farm data to find clues to the Fed's interest rate cut. Global stock markets have continued to rise this week. Asian stock markets closed mixed, and Japanese and Taiwanese stocks hit new highs On Friday, major Asia-Pacific stock indices closed mixed. Japanese stocks rose and fell, and the Nikkei 225 index closed flat at 40,912.37 points. It once broke through 41,100 points in the morning, setting a new high. The weekly increase was 3.36%, and most of the constituent stocks fell. In terms of heavyweight stocks, RECRUIT rose 3.07%, setting a new record high, Chugai Pharmaceutical rose 1.64%, Tokyo Electron rose 1.45%, Daiichi Sankyo rose 1.29%, and SoftBank rose 0.84%, setting a new record high. In terms of decline, Toyota Motor fell 2.12%, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone fell 1.08%, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group fell 0.71%, Keyence fell 0.66%, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial fell 0.6%. The Korean Composite Index closed up 1.32% at 2862.23 points, up 2.3% for the week, and most of the constituent stocks rose. In terms of heavyweight stocks, Samsung C&T rose 5.83%, NaverCorp rose 5.19%, Kakao rose 2.98%, Samsung Electronics rose 2.96%, and LG Electronics rose 2.69%. In terms of decline, POSCO Future M fell 0.56%, and LG Chem fell 0.28%. The Australian S&P 200 index closed down 0.12% at 7822.3 points, up 0.71% for the week. The New Zealand S&P 50 index rose 0.41% to 11794.81 points, up 0.66% for the week. The Taiwan Weighted Index also hit a record high of 23628 points in early trading today. Semiconductor stocks strengthened, with Sun Semiconductor International rising more than 8%. Vishnu Varathan, chief economist at Mizuho in Singapore, said demand for artificial intelligence has driven up share prices of chipmakers in Taiwan and South Korea. Global liquidity remains abundant, and to some extent, the surge in stock valuations in Asia-Pacific and Europe has proven this. ” European stocks also generally opened higher On Friday, major European stock indexes opened higher collectively. Germany's DAX30 index rose 0.39%, Britain's FTSE 100 index rose 0.18%, France's CAC40 index rose 0.22%, and Europe's Stoxx 50 index rose 0.33%.The French CAC 40 index has risen for the third consecutive day. This follows polls indicating that Marine Le Pen's National Rally and its allies will not secure a majority.

The UK's FTSE 100 index also opened higher. On the evening of the 4th local time, exit polls from the UK Parliament's lower house elections showed that the Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, won more than half of the seats in the lower house, becoming the ruling party in the UK. Historically, such election outcomes could bring favorable news for the UK stock and bond markets.

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"Small Non-Agricultural" and ISM service sector PMI fall short of expectations, with the Non-Farm Payrolls becoming a key signal affecting the Fed's decision-making.

Some economists predict that non-agricultural employment positions will increase by 200,000 in June, with the unemployment rate remaining stable at 4%. They also expect hourly wages to grow by 0.3% compared to May.

At the same time, traders are considering whether the recently released series of economic data indicate that the US economy is softening, and what impact this will have on the Fed's upcoming monetary policy decisions.

On Wednesday, the "Small Non-Agricultural" ADP employment data released in the United States showed that private wage growth in June was lower than expected, and the number of weekly unemployment benefit claims was higher than expected. Moreover, the US June ISM service sector PMI was significantly below expectations, with the contraction of service sector activity being the fastest in four years.

LPL Financial Global Strategist Quincy Krosby pointed out that, given data indicating that the US economy is cooling down, Friday's Non-Farm Payrolls data could be decisive for the Fed, as the Fed is looking for reasons to signal a loosening of monetary policy, and the Non-Farm data will help clarify the basic conditions of the labor market.

St James Place Chief Investment Officer Justin Onuekwusi also said: "With the June ISM service sector falling to 48.8, the lowest level since the pandemic, and the deterioration of unemployment benefit claims, negative data is ultimately seen as a positive for the market. It feels like September is the date everyone is now focusing on."