ReportWire

Equities Fall as China Loan-Rate Cuts Underwhelm: Markets Wrap

Written by

ReportWire

in

(Bloomberg) — Stocks ticked lower Tuesday as the rally in global equities wavered and investors fretted over China’s tepid post-pandemic recovery.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Shares fell from Hong Kong and Shanghai to Tokyo and Seoul while futures for US benchmarks also slipped after Wall Street was shut for a holiday Monday. Australian equities bucked the trend, eking out a small gain.

The moves pointed to further anxiety about Chinese growth and the lack of fresh stimulus from Beijing after a Monday selloff across the region hit China’s large tech companies. Chinese property companies were among the biggest decliners Tuesday after disappointment at the magnitude of cuts by banks to their lending rates, with the 10-basis points reduction to the five-year rate coming in less than some projections.

“The market was hoping to get a 15-bps cut to the 5-year LPR for any signal of stronger support to the property market,” said Redmond Wong, strategist at Saxo Capital Markets. prop

The yen fluctuated after weakening back to 142 versus the dollar as Japan’s loose monetary policy weighs on the currency. The yuan weakened slightly, taking declines to a third day.

The Australian dollar dropped more than 0.6% after minutes from the latest central bank decision — when rates were unexpectedly hiked — showed that the case to move in either direction was finely balanced.

Short-term yields on Australian government bonds changed direction and fell after the central bank minutes were released. US Treasury yields rose after a break from trading Monday.

Meanwhile, with the path of Federal Reserve interest rates increasingly uncertain, US traders are vacillating between the lure of the rally and concern it’s exhausted and that the market has become overbought.

Wall Street’s rally has now erased more than a year of Fed-induced losses, with stocks, volatility and the dollar shaking off the impact of 10 rate hikes. The S&P 500 index just capped a fifth straight week of gains and is now higher than it was the day the Fed kicked off its campaign.

“We have a very different story across the different regions as it relates to inflation, a post-Covid recovery and what that means from a monetary and fiscal perspective,” Uma Moriarity, senior analyst, investment strategy and global ESG lead for Centersquare Investment Management Inc, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Looking ahead, Fed Chair Jerome Powell will give his semi-annual report to Congress on Wednesday. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard and his counterparts in New York and Chicago are also among this week’s speakers.

Policymakers at the Fed kept interest rates unchanged at their latest meeting but warned of more tightening ahead. The decision last week came with forecasts for higher borrowing costs of 5.6% in 2023, implying two additional quarter-point rate hikes or one half-point increase before the end of the year.

Elsewhere in markets, gold slipped further after sliding 0.4% on Monday, while oil fell as China’s plans to support its economy were seen as insufficient to reignite demand.

Key events this week:

  • US housing starts, Tuesday

  • Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard speaks, Tuesday

  • New York Fed President John Williams speaks, Tuesday

  • Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivers semi-annual congressional testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Wednesday

  • Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee speaks, Wednesday

  • Eurozone consumer confidence, Thursday

  • Rate decisions in UK, Switzerland, Indonesia, Norway, Mexico, Philippines, Turkey, Thursday

  • US Conference Board leading index, initial jobless claims, current account, existing home sales, Thursday

  • Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivers semi-annual testimony to Congress before the Senate Banking Committee, Thursday

  • Cleveland Fed’s Loretta Mester speaks, Thursday

  • Eurozone S&P Global Eurozone Manufacturing PMI, S&P Global Eurozone Services PMI, Friday

  • Japan CPI, Friday

  • US S&P Global Manufacturing PMI, Friday

  • Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard speaks, Friday

Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

  • S&P 500 futures fell 0.3% as of 11:29 a.m. Tokyo time.

  • Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.3%.

  • Japan’s Topix fell 0.8%

  • Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.5%

  • Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.3%

  • The Shanghai Composite fell 0.4%

  • Euro Stoxx 50 futures were little changed

Currencies

  • The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed

  • The euro was little changed at $1.0918

  • The Japanese yen rose 0.3% to 141.62 per dollar

  • The offshore yuan fell 0.2% to 7.1775 per dollar

  • The Australian dollar fell 0.6% to $0.6810

Cryptocurrencies

  • Bitcoin rose 0.7% to $26,893.48

  • Ether rose 0.2% to $1,733.65

Bonds

  • The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced three basis points to 3.79%

  • Japan’s 10-year yield fell 0.5 basis point to 0.380%

  • Australia’s 10-year yield advanced three basis points to 4.00%

Commodities

This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

–With assistance from Jason Scott, Richard Henderson and Zhu Lin.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

Source link

More posts