Asia markets open higher as first set of EU referendum results trickle in

Australia, Japan and South Korea's markets were slightly up on the morning of Friday (24 June) as the first set of results from the EU referendum vote start to trickle in. However, the currency market has been volatile, taking the cue from the weaker pound.

Australia's ASX 200 rose slightly 0.81%, with all sectors spotting gains in early trade while Japan's Nikkei 225 was up 0.69% despite the volatility in the yen. In South Korean, Kospi managed a 0.35% gain.

Expectations are that the EU referendum results may be out in mid-morning Asia time which would have an impact on the both the stock as well as the currency markets, according to CNBC .

In the currency market, the Japanese yen initially weakened to 106.81 against the dollar. However, it subsequently strengthened after to 105.07 against the dollar. The Australian dollar and the New Zealand dollar also saw falls against the US dollar.

"Markets are very nervy at the moment as the polls —and the markets — could be wrong," said Joe Rundle, the head of trading at ETX Capital in Sydney, reported Reuters.

Robert Rennie, senior currency strategist at Westpac in Sydney. added: "It's very jittery and I suppose that's very much going to be the order of the day until we see final results being announced. We had the first results from Gibraltar which suggested a landslide and then Newcastle was only a marginal Remain and that was a disappointment."

The bigger-than-expected vote by Sunderland to leave the EU hit the market, Reuters also reported.

Gold saw a boost in early Asian trading, with spot gold rising 0.93% to $1,266.96 an ounce.

In the US, the Dow Jones industrial average closed up 1.29% or 230.24 points at 18,011.07. The S&P 500 closed up 27.87 points or 1.34% at 2,113.32 while the Nasdaq composite gained 76.72 points to 4,910.04, up 1.59%.