Asia share indexes are up and down Wednesday as sentiment took a knock from selling in large capital Wall Street technology companies - combined with talk of rising U.S. interest rates.
Holidays in Japan, China and South Korea limited the early reaction, leaving MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan flat.
Japan's Nikkei was shut but futures traded down at 28,735 compared with the last cash close of 28,812.
Nasdaq futures steadied after overnight selling while S&P 500 futures were up 0.1%.
The Nasdaq had dropped 1.9% Tuesday as some big technology company shares were sold as a result of earlier gains - including Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
Valuations were tested when U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said rate rises may be needed to stop the economy overheating. She later waked back the comments - but it reminded investors rates would have to rise at some point in the future.
"Moderate inflation and a slow moving Fed would continue to be supportive, but inflation and a reactive Fed may prove to be a negative for valuations," Tapas Strickland, a director of economics at NAB, said.
"Either way yields and equities are likely to be in a dance as much better than expected economic data continues to challenge central banks' rates guidance."
U.S. payrolls data Friday is forecast to show a rise of 978,000, while some estimates go as high as 2.1 million.
So far, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has argued the labor market is still far short of where it needs to be to start talking of tapering asset buying.
The Fed's patience allowed yields on U.S. 10-year notes to ease back to 1.59%, from last week's top of 1.69%, though the market has struggled to break below 1.53%.
Just the mention of higher U.S. rates was enough to help the dollar recoup a little of its recent losses.
The euro dropped back to $1.2015 and threatened to breach important chart support in the $1.1995/1.2000 area. A break would open the way to a retracement target at $1.1923.
The dollar was a shade firmer on the yen at 109.36, but faces resistance at 109.61. Against a basket of currencies, the dollar edged up to 91.282 and away from a recent two-month low of 90.422.
The New Zealand dollar blipped higher to $0.7160 when local jobs data proved strong than expected.
In commodity markets, palladium rose to a record on worries over short supplies of the metal used in emissions controlling devices in automobiles. Gold was at $1,776 an ounce. Oil prices climbed to a seven-week peak as more countries opened their borders to travelers, improving the demand outlook for petrol and jet fuel. Brent added 57 cents to $69.49 a barrel, near its highest since mid-March while U.S. crude rose 52 cents to $66.23 per barrel.
