Asia
The Trump-Kim summit overshadowed all other global events today and it had a positive effect on Asian markets, particularly China’s CSI 300, which rose over 1% today. While the summit was light on detail pertaining to world trade, the photo opportunity with the two leaders managed to erase some of the bad feeling hanging over from the G7 summit. The post-meeting press conference did touch on the G7, however, continuing the animosity between the US and Canada.
Hong Kong and China markets have been buffeted recently by trade fears and gyrating sentiment over the technology sector. The Hang Seng has moved higher in the run-up to this summit, in line with global equities, and inched forward today to hold above 31,000 points.
Japan’s Nikkei pushed higher towards the 23,000 points level as the US dollar held above 110 yen. The Nikkei has not managed to hold above 23,000 points since late January.
Europe
Stocks in Europe saw a more modest impact from political events and after an early move higher on the Euro Stoxx 50, the market dropped back.
A similar trend was seen on the FTSE 100 as a strengthening in the pound against the dollar harmed the case for UK equities. Housebuilding shares were in the doldrums on the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 after updates from Crest Nicholson (CRST) and Bellway (BWY) – even though the latter’s performance was upbeat.
North America
US markets rose modestly on Monday in the absence of any drivers from earnings and as investors held fire before the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Nevertheless the link between Fed decisions and short term market moves is often hard to predict: the market consensus is for a quarter point rate rise and the US central bank is following a relatively orderly path to monetary tightening.
Before the Fed comes US inflation data for May, which is expected to show a 2.7% rise on May 2017 for the Consumer Price Index.
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