AP – Global stock markets were mostly higher yesterday after Wall Street drifted lower following its latest rally.
London, Shanghai, Paris and Hong Kong gained. Tokyo declined. Wall Street futures rebounded. Oil prices rose.
Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index lost 0.4 per cent on Monday as tech stocks declined following a rapid run-up while most other stocks advanced. The index is off this year’s high of two weeks ago but still up more than 20 per cent since mid-October.
In early trading, the FTSE in London rose 0.2 per cent to 7,471.46 while the DAX in Frankfurt lost 0.1 per cent to 15,813.06. The CAC 40 in Paris advanced 0.3 per cent to 7,184.35.
On Wall Street, futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were 0.2 per cent higher.
On Monday, the Dow lost less than 0.1 per cent. The Nasdaq composite, dominated by tech stocks, fell 1.2 per cent.
Shanghai Composite Index gained 1.2 per cent to 3,189.44 after China’s No 2 leader Premier Li Qiang said economic growth accelerated and can hit this year’s five-per-cent target. Li, speaking at a conference, gave no growth rate for the latest quarter but said it is faster than the previous quarter’s 4.5 per cent.
The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo sank 0.5 per cent to 32,538.33 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.9 per cent to 19,148.13.
The Kospi in Seoul shed less than 0.1 per cent to 2,581.39 while Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 added 0.6 per cent to 7,118.20.
India’s Sensex rose 0.3 per cent to 63,154.82. New Zealand and Southeast Asian markets advanced.
Stock prices have surged this year on hopes that a recession expected after the Federal Reserve and central banks in Europe and Asia raised interest rates to cool inflation might come later and be shorter and shallower than previously forecast.
The S&P 500 hit a peak for the year two weeks ago before enthusiasm eased. Last week was the index’s first losing week in the past six.
On Monday, Tesla Inc fell 6.1 per cent after roughly doubling this year.
PacWest Bancorp, one of the banks punished by Wall Street in the hunt for the next potential weak bank, rose four per cent after it sold a portfolio of loans to raise cash.
Electric vehicle company Lucid Group rose 1.5 per cent after announcing a deal to provide powertrain and battery systems to Aston Martin.
A report on Friday will show how the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation behaved in May, but consumer and wholesale price data already were reported earlier this month.
Traders are betting June inflation data due out next month will push the Fed to raise rates by a quarter of a percentage point at its next meeting, which runs July 25-26, according to data from CME Group.
The Fed skipped a rate hike at this month’s meeting after pushing its benchmark lending rate to a 16-year high to cool inflation. Much of Wall Street expects a hike next month to be the final one of this cycle.
The Fed, meanwhile, has suggested it could raise rates twice more because inflation remains stubbornly high even if it has come down from its peak last summer.
In energy markets, benchmark US crude rose 45 cents to USD69.82 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract gained USD0.21 on Monday to USD69.37. Brent crude, the price standard for international oil trading, added USD0.42 to USD74.77 per barrel in London. It advanced USD0.33 cents the previous session to USD74.18.
The dollar edged up to JPY143.48 from Monday’s JPY143.45. The euro rose to USD1.0939 from USD1.0915.
