Asian shares opened mixed on Thursday, as investors consider what the Fed's Beige Book means for U.S. interest rate expectations.
Down Under, the S&P/ASX 200 opened down 1.02 percent, with the energy subindex shedding 1.52 percent, the materials subindex losing 1.77 percent and the heavily-weighted financial subindex seeing losses of 0.79 percent.
Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 0.18 percent, while South Korea's benchmark Kospi opened higher by 0.41 percent.
The Beige Book, a key indicator of the U.S. economic health and closely watched by the Federal Reserve, showed moderate wage growth in coming months. Despite the labor market nearing full employment, broad-based wage pressures have so far been slow to pick up. But if wages start to rise, that would push up inflation in the months ahead and likely spur the Fed into action.
Japan revised its second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) up to 0.7 percent year-on-year, compared with the initial estimates of 0.2 percent.
Japan-listed Nintendo shares were untraded early in the session, amid heavy buy orders after news that the "Super Mario Run" mobile game will be available on Apple's app store in December, Reuters reported.
U.S.-listed shares of Nintendo jumped more than 28 percent Wednesday after the announcement.
In currency markets, the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, was trading at 94.928, down from levels above 96 last week before the release of disappointing U.S. economic data.
The dollar was fetching 101.78 yen in early Asian trade, compared with the dollar/yen pair trading above 103 last week before the market began to dial back expectations for the Fed to hike rates in September.
"The yen strength over the past 24 hours has been driven by a report published yesterday, noting that the Bank of Japan is struggling to reach policy consensus ahead of its policy meeting on 21 September," said Rodrigo Catril, FX strategist at National Australia Bank, in a Thursday note.
Oil prices jumped in the U.S. session, after American Petroleum Institute data showed the largest weekly stock declines in nationwide crude inventories in over 30 years. U.S. crude futures settled up $0.67 at $45.50 a barrel, and jumped nearly 3 percent in post-settlement trading, while Brent added $0.72 cents to close at $47.98.
China is set to release August trade data while Australia's July trade figures were due. The European Central Bank has a monetary policy meeting and the U.S. jobless claims were due later in the global day.
"China's monthly foreign trade surplus has been elevated of late because of the sharp drop in imports," Moody's Analytics' economists wrote in a weekly note. "Exports [have been] relatively subdued, though, indicating that foreign trade in general will be of little benefit to the economy over the near term," they added.
Stateside, the Dow Jones industrial average finished down 0.06 percent at 18526.14, while the S&P 500 ended effectively flat at 2186.16. The Nasdaq composite was the exception among the majors, edging up 0.15 percent to 5283.93, which was a fresh intraday and closing record.