Asian markets: Shanghai Composite slips amid disappointing US jobs and weak China trade numbers

While Asian stock market indices were trading in a mixed pattern on 9 May, China's Shanghai Composite Index was down 2.40% at 2,843.41 as of 5.47am. This was amid a weak US jobs report and less than expected trade numbers in China.

US non-farm payrolls data for April, which was released on 6 May, showed an increase of 160,000 for the month. This was lower than the 200,000 forecast by economists. This lower than expected data, which is a statistic reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics to give a broad indication of the total number of paid US workers, made a few financial institutions to lower their expectations of an interest rate hike in 2016 to just one.

Investors were also concerned with the trade numbers in the world's second largest economy. Data released by Beijing over the weekend indicated that the country's exports fell 1.8% in April. The data showed that imports too fell by 10.9% when compared to the same month in 2015.

These two factors made investors question the underlying strength of the world's biggest economies. Meanwhile, indices in the rest of Asia traded as follows on 9 May at 6.02am GMT:

Country	Index	Price	Up/Down	%Change
Hong Kong	Hang Seng Index	20,204.73	Up	0.47%
Japan	Nikkei 225	16,232.98	Up	0.78%
South Korea	KOSPI	1,964.96	Down	0.59%
India	CNX Nifty	7,838.45	Up	1.36%
Australia	S&P/ASX 200	5,308.80	Up	0.32%

Meanwhile, last week (6 May), the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 17,740.63, up 0.45%, while the FTSE 100 closed at 6,125.70, up 0.14%.

Among commodities, oil prices saw an uptick amid supply shortages caused by the wildfire in Canada and amid the unexpected exit of Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia's veteran oil minister, from his post. On 9 May, WTI crude oil was trading 1.93% higher at $45.52 (£31.55, €39.92) a barrel, while Brent was 1.43% higher at $46.02 a barrel at 6.09am GMT.