China breifing, Japan trade, Australia jobs

China property stocks dropped following a briefing by the country’s housing ministry, while the broader CSI 300 was up along with most other Asia-Pacific markets.

The CSI 300 real estate index — which had gained 5% on Wednesday — fell 5.5%, while the benchmark CSI 300 was marginally higher.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.6%, while the broad-based Topix was little changed as investors assesed trade data out of Japan.

Japan’s exports fell 1.7% in September compared to the same period last year, surprising economists polled by Reuters who expected a 0.5% growth rate. It’s the first time that exports contracted this year and was down sharply from a revised growth rate of 5.5% in August. 

September’s import growth came in at 2.1% also missing expectations of economists who expected growth of 3.2%. The figure was down from August’s growth of 2.3%.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.4% in trading.

Australia’s unemployment rate for September in at 4.1%, slightly down from a Reuters poll that expected it to remain unchanged from August at 4.2%.

Australia’s labor participation rate slightly increased to 67.2% in September, up 0.1 percentage points from August as well as forecasts.

South Korea’s Kospi was trading up 0.1%, while the small-cap Kosdaq was flat.

The Hong Kong Hang Seng index rose 1.1% following a number of policy announcements from its chief executive on Wednesday.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is set to report earnings later Thursday. TSMC’s results will be in focus after poor sales forecasts from Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML drove down global chip stocks.

Overnight in the U.S., the Dow Jones gained 337.28 points, or 0.79%, to ended at 43,077.70.

The S&P 500 added 0.47% to 5,842.47, while the Nasdaq Composite jumped 0.28% to close at 18,367.08.

— CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han and Jesse Pound contributed to this report.