FRIDAY – Markets in Japan, South Korea and China traded higher on Friday while other Asia Pacific markets, including Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia, were closed for a public holiday.

The Nikkei 225 in Japan rose 0.5% to 22,200.56 as a number of tech stocks posted gains, with Nintendo shares jumping 14.12%.

On Thursday, Chinese tech giant Tencent won an important approval to start selling the Nintendo Switch game console in China, one of the largest video games market in the world, Reuters reported. The Switch was first released in 2017. U.S.-listed Nintendo ADRs rose more than 12% in the previous session.

In the currency market, the dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of its peer, traded at 97.363, climbing from levels near 96.900 earlier in the week. The Japanese yen traded at 111.90 to the dollar, weakening from levels near 111.20 in the previous week.

Oil prices ticked up overnight following declines in crude exports from Saudi Arabia. Global benchmark Brent rose about 35 cents to $ 71.97 a barrel while U.S. crude was up 24 cents to $64.

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