Asia opens Monday still digesting Friday's mixed close, with Hormuz oil risk and a hyper-volatile Korean chip complex doing more to set the tape than any single catalyst.
Nikkei futures head in soft, tracking Friday's slip after Iran's restrictive Strait of Hormuz draft plan lifted oil and dented regional risk appetite; Hang Seng and CSI 300 stay rangebound, both still digesting that same energy/inflation overhang. Korea remains the outlier — Kospi lost 5.54% in its last violent session, with Samsung and SK Hynix down 6.4% and 9.9% after the labor minister pressed chipmakers to share more AI-boom profits with workers, a reminder that last month's circuit-breaker plunge left that tape thin and reactive.
In FX, USD/JPY sits near 157.6-158 after reversing back above 158 Friday as gains from the joint Tokyo-Washington intervention faded, yen still up over 3% on the month but down nearly 7% year-on-year; USD/CNH holds a tight, managed range as the dollar stays soft post-payrolls. That softness is the backdrop into the US: Friday's weak July payrolls print sent the S&P 500 to a record close and pulled the 10-year to 4.64%, even as the Fed's hold last week carried three dissents pushing for a hike. Monday's US calendar is empty, leaving the tape to drift into Wednesday's CPI and Thursday's PPI, the week's real decision points for rate-cut pricing.
The risk: a Hormuz escalation that keeps oil bid and yields sticky, or a CPI print hot enough to validate the Fed's hawkish dissenters, flips this from a soft-landing, rate-cut tape back into a stagflation scare fast.