On Friday, the yen declined and Asian markets were neutral, ending a choppy week in which investors disagreed on how quickly the Federal Reserve would hike interest rates to combat inflation.
Australia’s AXJO (.AXJO) fell 0.72%, while MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific equities outside of Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) gained 0.1%.
While Chinese blue-chip stocks (.CSI300) lost 0.1%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index (.HSI) increased by 0.35 percent.
The biggest outlier was Japan’s Nikkei (.N225), which rose 2.43% when markets reopened following a national vacation to reach its highest level since January.
The yen was trading at 133.245 per dollar, down 1.14%.
The futures for European stocks did not indicate any significant movements for the day. While the Euro Stoxx 50 futures were down 0.03%, the FTSE 100 futures were down 0.01% as Britain was scheduled to release its second-quarter GDP data later in the day.
Early this week, markets were hesitant ahead of important economic data coming out of the United States. Inflation was somewhat lower than anticipated in July, according to the consumer price index (CPI) data released on Wednesday, but the producer pricing index (PPI) unexpectedly declined for the first time since April 2020.
Up until a series of Fed speakers put an end to thoughts of the central bank going slowly on additional policy tightening, the minor lowering of inflation readings had propelled up global markets and restrained an uptick in the dollar.
According to Carlos Casanova, senior economist at UBP, “The Fed will do what they stated, which is whatever it takes to handle inflation,” therefore you are seeing some repositioning away from U.S. stocks around that.
The Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) and S&P 500 (.SPX) both ended the day with losses of 0.58% and 0.07%, respectively, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) gained 0.08%.
According to economic statistics, a rate increase of 50 basis points next month “makes logical,” but San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly indicated on Thursday that she would be open to a larger increase if required. Currently, the rate is between 2.25% and 2.5%.
In keeping with what Fed Chair Jerome Powell said during the Fed’s most recent meeting in July, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans stated that he thought the Fed would likely need to raise its policy rate to 3.25 to 3.5% this year and to 3.75% to 4% by the end of next year.
Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Fed, said that he had not “seen anything that alters” the need for the Fed to raise its policy rate to 3.9% by year’s end and to 4.4% by the end of 2023.
Investors are still unclear of how set the Fed is after chewing over those remarks.
The likelihood of a 75 bps increase in September was as high as 68% early this week, but it is currently closer to 34% than it was a week ago.
According to John Vail, chief global strategist at Nikko Asset Management, “there are too many uncertainties to anticipate the course of oil and other CPI prices ahead, but the peak of inflation is obviously behind us.”
“What matters is how far and how quickly it will fall. Since we anticipate relatively sticky inflation, we think central banks will need to be more hawkish than the general opinion.”
After increasing over night, 10-year Treasury rates remained stable and were last seen trading at 2.8765%. The CPI data on Wednesday sent the yield down, but it recovered on Thursday to reach a nearly three-week high.
Brent crude oil futures dropped 54 cents to $98.06 per barrel in the commodities market. Additionally down, U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 55 cents to $93.79.
WTI is certain to record a weekly increase of 5%, while Brent is still on course to gain more than 4% this week.
The most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, lost 1.10% of its overnight gains to trade at $23,943.
At $1,791 per ounce, spot gold was up 0.11%.
Source: Reuters
