An employee works on the assembly line of LED lighting products in China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets are set for a lower start to the week as investors look ahead to key economic data from China and Japan this week.
Most notably, China will release its third-quarter gross domestic product numbers on Wednesday. Economists polled by Reuters expect a 4.4% year-on-year expansion, down from 6.3% in the previous quarter.
Japan’s September inflation data is expected on Friday, which will come ahead of the country’s central bank’s monetary policy meeting on Oct. 30 and 31.
South Korea’s central bank will also announce its rate decision on Thursday. The Bank of Korea has held rates steady for five meetings in a row at 3.5% since February.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 started the week down 0.17%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 is also set to fall, with the futures contract in Chicago at 32,040 and its counterpart in Osaka at 31,880 against the index’s last close of 32,315.99.
Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index stood at 17,751, pointing to a weaker open compared with the HSI’s close of 17,813.45.
On Friday in the U.S., all three major indexes ended the day mixed, pressured by a spike in oil prices and rising inflation expectations, as Wall Street wrapped up a volatile week.
The S&P 500 declined by 0.50%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 1.23% The Dow Jones Industrial Average was the outlier, rising by 0.12%
— CNBC’s Pia Singh and Lisa Kailai Han contributed to this report.