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By Bloomberg

Asian equities rose, with a gauge of Australian shares heading for a record streak of gains, before U.S. payrolls data. China’s yuan strengthened the most this year and Russia’s ruble advanced with oil.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index climbed 0.4 percent by 7:16 a.m. in London, with the S&P/ASX 200 Index capping a 12th straight gain in Sydney. Futures on the Euro Stoxx 50 Index slipped 0.3 percent and contracts on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index were little changed. The yuan climbed 0.2 percent after the central bank forced appreciation for the second time this week. The ruble added 0.7 percent. Oil in New York jumped 2.2 percent as a gauge of price swings hit an almost five-year high. Gold advanced.

With the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index heading for its biggest weekly decline since September 2013, investors are watching the U.S. monthly employment report for clues to the strength of the world’s largest economy. The European Central Bank will allow the Greek central bank to provide as much as 59.5 billion euros ($68 billion) in emergency funding for the country’s lenders, a person familiar with the decision said.

“Since the ECB entered the brave new world of quantitative easing, the Swiss National Bank gave up protecting its peg and central banks the world over have been scrambling to devalue their currencies through interest-rate cuts; the globe has become yield mad,” Evan Lucas, a Melbourne-based strategist at IG Ltd., wrote in a note today. “It has sent bond and equities markets in to a bidding frenzy.”

Easing Wave

Denmark cut its deposit rate for the fourth time this year on Thursday to match the level of Switzerland’s key rate of minus 0.75 percent. China on Wednesday reduced the amount of cash banks need to set aside as reserves, while Australia’s central bank lowered its outlook for economic expansion and inflation today after reducing interest rates to a record on Tuesday.

German 10-year bund yields this week fell below Japan’s for the first time ever before the ECB begins its expanded asset purchases next month. Bunds due in a decade paid 0.36 percent today, little changed from yesterday.

Japanese bonds climbed, with the 10-year yield falling 1 1/2 basis points to 0.34 percent. The rate on the benchmark security jumped as much as 13 basis points, or 0.13 percentage point, this week, the most since at least May 2013. Similar U.S. Treasuries also gained, with the yield dropping two basis points to 1.81 percent.

Nine of the 10 industry groups advanced on the Asia-Pacific stock gauge today. The measure is up 1.3 percent this week, supported by gains of more than 3.5 percent for subindexes of commodity and energy shares.

Record Run

Australia’s benchmark stock gauge added 0.2 percent, heading for a more-than 6 1/2-year high today. The measure has a dividend yield of 4.23 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s 198 basis points more than the RBA’s overnight cash rate and more than twice the 1.95 percent offered by the S&P 500.

Japan’s Topix index climbed 0.5 percent, buoyed by lenders and a gain by SoftBank Corp., whose U.S. Sprint Corp. unit posted better-than-estimated earnings after “half-price” offers helped the carrier add subscribers for the first time in 12 quarters.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index declined 0.3 percent and a gauge of Chinese companies in the city slid 0.9 percent. The Shanghai Composite Index dropped 1.9 percent and is heading for its third straight weekly retreat, the longest such streak since May.

Yuan Rally

The yuan strengthened the most this year after the People’s Bank of China raised its reference rate for the yuan to a level that forced appreciation, the second time it’s done so this week. The currency climbed as much as 0.24 percent to 6.2370 per dollar.

Australia’s currency strengthened 0.4 percent to 78.29 U.S. cents, set for its biggest weekly gain a month. Downside revisions from the RBA were less than market expectations, reducing the chances of a rate cut in May, Elias Haddad, a senior currency strategist at Commonwealth Bank, said in an interview.

The ruble strengthened 0.6 percent to 67.0043 per dollar, while Malaysia’s ringgit climbed to 3.5487 to the greenback, the strongest level in a month, amid the recovery in oil prices. Gold for immediate delivery advanced 0.3 percent to $1,268.16 an ounce, paring a second straight weekly decline.

Oil Volatility

West Texas Intermediate crude traded at $51.59 a barrel. The contract climbed 4.2 percent on Thursday, paring an advance of as much as 7.5 percent. It plunged 8.7 percent Wednesday, the most since November. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Crude Oil Volatility Index, which measures price fluctuations using options of the U.S. Oil Fund, ended the day at the highest since April 2009.

Brent crude rose 1.8 percent to $57.63 a barrel in London. The benchmark for more than half the world’s oil added 4.9 percent yesterday to settle at $56.81 a barrel.

Oil’s wild swings are whipsawing shares of energy companies, with a global measure of stocks in the sector moving by more than 1.3 percent every day this week. The CBOE Volatility Index fell 7.2 percent to 17.02 after rising 5.8 percent Wednesday. The gauge, known as the VIX, is down 19 percent this week after jumping 26 percent last week.

As it considers the timing of a potential interest-rate increase, the Federal Reserve is weighing data to determine whether slowing growth in overseas economies is hurting the U.S. A jobs report Friday from the Labor Department is predicted to show nonfarm payrolls rose by 230,000 last month, while the unemployment rate remained at 5.6 percent.

U.S. data Thursday showed record imports and a slowdown in shipments to overseas customers pushed the trade deficit to a two-year high in December. A separate report indicated the productivity of U.S. workers dropped in the fourth quarter as employers boosted hours by the most in 16 years.