BEIJING (AP) – Global stock markets and Wall Street futures fell yesterday after unexpectedly good United States (US) jobs data left room for more interest rate hikes to cool inflation.
London, Shanghai, Tokyo and Frankfurt declined. Oil prices edged lower but stayed above USD90 per barrel.
Fewer Americans than expected filed unemployment claims last week, the Labour Department reported on Thursday.
That might reinforce sentiment at the Federal Reserve that the world’s biggest economy can tolerate more rate hikes to cool inflation, which is running at multi-decade highs, without derailing growth. That “might keep the door open for aggressive Fed tightening”, Edward Moya of Oanda said in a report.
In early trading, the FTSE 100 in London fell 0.4 per cent to 7,513.45 and Frankfurt’s DAX lost 0.5 per cent to 13,623.81. The CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.3 per cent to 6,536.65. On Wall Street, the future for the benchmark S&P 500 index was off 0.6 per cent. That for the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.4 per cent.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 rose 0.2 per cent. The Dow gained 0.1 per cent and the Nasdaq composite added 0.2 per cent.

In Asia, the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.6 per cent to 3,258.08 and the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo shed less than 0.1 per cent to 28,930.33. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong added 0.4 per cent to 19,838.10.
The Kospi in Seoul shed 0.5 per cent to 2,495.03 while Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 lost less than 0.1 per cent to 7,110.40.
India’s Sensex lost one per cent to 59,701.73. New Zealand and Southeast Asian markets retreated. Investors looked ahead to the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole conference in Wyoming next week for indications of when and how much the US central bank might raise rates.
Minutes of the Fed’s July meeting released this week said inflation still is too high and made clear the central bank will keep raising interest rates.
The Fed has raised interest rates twice this year by 0.75 percentage points, triple its usual margin. Forecasters expect a hike at the board’s September meeting, but said pressure for a similarly large increase has declined as economic growth cooled.
Data on Wednesday showed July retail sales held steady with the previous month despite concern inflation might depress consumers’ willingness to spend.
In energy markets, benchmark US crude lost USD0.95 to USD89.55 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract surged USD2.39 to USD90.50 on Thursday. Brent crude, the price basis for international trading, fell USD0.94 to USD95.64 per barrel in London. It jumped USD2.94 the previous day to USD96.59.
The dollar rose to JPY136.49 from Thursday’s JPY135.91. The euro fell to USD1.0078 from USD1.0091.