Global Equities Mixed Ahead Of Yellen Speech

Global stocks were mixed on Friday ahead of Federal Reserve's Chair Janet Yellen's speech at an event at Harvard University.

Yellen is scheduled to talk at 1:15 p.m on Friday. For those keeping track, the event is being billed as a "conversation" with Harvard's Greg Mankiw, an economics professor.

As a reminder, the U.S. equity market will be closed on Monday due to the Memorial Day holiday.

"Yellen's public comments tonight could give markets good reason to remain cautious," said Margaret Yang, an analyst at CMC Markets in Singapore. With a number of Fed governors signalling recently that they're leaning toward favouring a rate hike, "her words will be closely watched by the market for a clearer picture of the market outlook."

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Taiwan's TSEC index gained 0.83 percent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index gained 0.78 percent, India's Mumbai Sensex index gained 0.65 percent, Japan's Nikkei index gained 0.37 percent and Australia's ASX index gained 0.33 percent.

China's Shanghai Composite index lost 0.05 percent.

While most major Asian indices closed higher, European major indices were trading flat to slightly lower with more than four hours of trading remaining.

France's CAC index was lower by 0.34 percent, Germany's DAX index was lower by 0.16 percent the UK's FTSE index was lower by 0.04 percent.

Oil prices ticked lower early Friday morning ahead of the weekly rig count data that will be released later on in the trading session.

The commodity traded lower on Friday after hitting resistance at the key $50 per barrel mark. Brent crude futures were lower by around $0.70 at $48.90 a barrel, while U.S. WTI crude was lower by $0.49 at $48.98 a barrel.