Asia
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was the best performing stock market in the Asia-Pacific region on Thursday, making up for a few weaker trading sessions. China’s Shanghai Composite Index also managed a near-1% gain on the day, but at 3,117 is still down from over 3,500 points at the start of the year.
Japan’s Nikkei was slightly higher as the dollar maintained its strong recent run against the yen. The country’s consumer price index for March is in view on Friday morning. The rise in the cost of living in Japan is expected to have dropped from 1.5% in February to 1.1% in March.
Europe
Ahead of a busy UK corporate calendar this week, Thursday saw a handful of FTSE 100 names update the market on their progress, including Unilever (ULVR), Rentokil Initial (RTO) and Sky (SKY).
Unilever, which is under fire over its decision to remove its dual UK/Netherlands listing, saw its shares fall after announcing a fall in revenues. Its update did, however, promise investors the prospect of a share buyback.
The FTSE 250 was the best performing UK index in percentage terms. The FTSE 100 made modest gains after the pound dropped through 1.42 dollars following poor retail sales figures.
Eurozone exchanges made minor gains by midday Central European Time.
North America
After a mixed performance on Wednesday, US markets are expected to lack direction at the open on Thursday, despite a broadly positive start to the earnings season – banking groups have yet to spring any major surprises so far. Bank of New York Mellon (BK) reports before the market opens today.
Ahead of the start of the technology section of US earning season, Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos has revealed to shareholders that the company now has more than 100 million Prime members. The company reports first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, as does under-fire Facebook (FB).
Weekly jobless claims to April 14 will also be in view.
:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/morningstar/DJVWK4TWZBCJZJOMX425TEY2KQ.png)
