Asia
Markets in Asia-Pacific moved higher on Tuesday after a string of indifferent trading sessions and despite another lacklustre performance on Wall Street.
A drop in the 10-year US bond yield away from the 3% milestone also helped the case for equities, as did a strong performance for Google parent company Alphabet (GOOGL) after the US market closed.
Currency factors were a key dynamic today –the dollar moved up to nearly 109 yen, having hit a recent now over 104 at the end of last month. A near 1% move higher in Japan’s Nikkei 225 pushed the index comfortably above 22,000 points. But the best performing market in the region was China’s Shanghai Composite, which closed nearly 2% higher at 3,128 points. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, which is sensitive to changes in tech sentiment, was also up over 1% on the day.
Europe
The FTSE 100 built on Monday’s gains with a move above 7,400 as a rising dollar and higher oil prices combined with Asia’s gains to give London’s blue-chips a push higher. Oil giants BP (BP) and Shell (RDSB) were in favour, as was bid target Shire (SHP).
UK borrowing figures provided some good economic news for a government under political strain. March borrowing fell on the same month in 2017, meaning that the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, borrowed less than expected for the financial year 2017-2018. Day-to-day spending – stripping out investment – was in surplus for the first time since 2002, according to the Office for National Statistics.
In the eurozone, Germany’s Dax was the best performing major stock market – despite a drop in German business sentiment – but the gain was modest in comparison with Asia.
North America
April’s consumer confidence index is published just before the market opens.
Earnings season steps up a gear on Tuesday – notable names reporting include Coca-Cola (KO), 3M (MMM) and Verizon (VZ).
Alphabet’s strong rise in profits is raising expectations for Wednesday’s results from Facebook (FB) and Amazon (AMZN).
:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/morningstar/DJVWK4TWZBCJZJOMX425TEY2KQ.png)
