Investing.com - Asian shares were mixed on Friday with investors keeping tabs on local data sets and noting an expected outcome for the Caixin China manufacturing PMI.
The Nikkei 225 fell 1.55%, while the S&P/ASX 200 dropped 0.80% and the Shanghai Composite rose 0.08% ahead a major holiday period starting next week.
The Caixin manufacturing PMI for September came in at 50.1 as expected with holidays in China next week in focus going forward. "The readings for the manufacturing PMI over the past three months seem to indicate that the economy has begun to stabilise," Zhengsheng Zhong, director of macroeconomic analysis at Caixin said.
But Zhong cautioned that an increasingly strained fiscal budget could pose a risk to sustainable growth. "Given that the growth rate of fiscal income has slowed recently while expenditures have swung, there is insufficient momentum to drive future economic growth, and there is a risk that industrial output may decline."
The official China manufacturing PMI for September from the National Bureau of Statistics and China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing will be released on Saturday and came in at 50.4 in August which was the highest since October 2014.
In Australia, HIA new home sales for September rose 6.1% month-on-month, with a fall of 9.7% the previous month and housing credit gained 0.5% for August, the same as the previous month, while private sector credit gained 0.4%, below the 0.5% gain seen in August month-on-month.
Earlier in Japan, a busy day with household spending for August down a sharp 3.7%, compared to a drop of 1.0% seen month-on-month and a decline of 4.6% year-on-year, more than the 2.5% fall seen. It was the 11th fall in the past 12 months. As Thursday's retail sales data showed, spending slowed in August, when typhoon weather kept shoppers away and there was one less weekend compared to a year before. As well, the seasonally adjusted average unemployment rate in August edged up from the previous month to 3.1% but was still close to a 21-year low of 3.0% in July.
As well, national core CPI for August fell 0.5%, more than the expected 0.4% decline year-on-year, the sixth straight drop, matching July's pace. Retailers are cautious about raising prices in broad sectors after last year's price hikes amidst the uncertainty over global and domestic growth. And national CPI dipped 0.5% for August as expected.
Industrial production in Japan for August rose 1.5% provisionally, handily beating an expected gain of 0.5%.
Ahead, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, Fed Governor Jerome Powell, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari and Kansas City Fed President Esther George are all scheduled to speak during the day.
There is also an appearance by Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who is due to speak via video conference at the Minority Bankers Forum in Kansas City at 4:00PM ET (20:00GMT).
Yellen told Congress on Wednesday that the central bank does not have a "fixed timetable" for modifying its monetary policy. However, she added that continued job creation at its current pace would cause the economy to overheat and, in that case, the Fed could be forced to raise rates faster than expected. Markets are currently pricing in around a 52% chance of a rate hike at December's meeting, according to Investing.com's Fed Rate Monitor Tool.
U.S. stocks were lower after the close on Thursday, as losses in the Healthcare, Utilities and Financials sectors led shares lower.
At the close in NYSE, the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 1.07%, while the S&P 500 index lost 0.93%, and the NASDAQ Composite index declined 0.93%.