BANGKOK — Shares advanced in Asia on Thursday after a day of modest gains on Wall Street, led by buying of energy and technology stocks. Oil prices also rose.In a quiet news week, investors are watching for a U.S. Labor Department report on Friday that economists forecast will show employers added more than 650,000 jobs last month.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index NIK, +0.39% rose near 0.5% and the Shanghai Composite index SHCOMP, -0.10% added 0.4%. South Korea’s Kospi 180721, +0.84% jumped 0.8%, helped by the rally in technology shares, which favor market heavyweights like Samsung Electronics 005930, +2.72%.On Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 SPX, +0.14% rose 0.1% to 4,208.12 as strength in technology, energy and real estate stocks offset a pullback in retailers and other companies that rely on consumer spending.
Shares in movie theater operator AMC Entertainment AMC, +95.22% nearly doubled in another bout of heavy trading as the company embraced its status as a “meme” stock being driven higher by hordes of individual investors. Other stocks like GameStop GME, +13.34% that have been championed on online message boards and social media also rose.
Technology companies did much of the heavy lifting for the S&P 500. Chipmaker Nvidia NVDA, +3.16% rose 3.2%. Payments processor Visa V, +1.34% gained 1.3% after giving investors an encouraging financial update.