Home Enterprise bank Global stocks mostly fall as investors watch corporate earnings

Global stocks mostly fall as investors watch corporate earnings

0

BANGKOK (AP) — Stocks were mostly down in Europe and Asia on Tuesday as investors braced for a slew of corporate earnings reports.

Shares rose in Paris and Tokyo but fell in Shanghai and London, where the FTSE 100 fell as Britain’s third prime minister this year, Rishi Sunak, prepared to take office and appoint a cabinet. to deal with the economic and political crises in the United Kingdom.

US futures edged up 0.1%, but oil prices retreated.

Markets remained jittery over the outcome of a Communist Party congress in China, where key reformers were barred from the highest ranks of the ruling party leadership. Hong Kong’s benchmark index edged down 0.1% to 15,165.59, failing to hold onto early gains after a 6.4% selloff the previous day. The Shanghai Composite Index fell less than 0.1% to 2,976.28.

Chinese stocks tumbled after a Communist Party congress in Beijing where leader Xi Jinping gave himself an unprecedented third five-year term and installed key allies as top ruling party leaders, crushing officials considered as pro-market reformers.

Xi wants a bigger role for the Communist Party in China’s trade and technology development, raising fears that centralized control could hold back an already slowing economy.

But that might not mean major policy changes, said ING’s Iris Pang.

Indeed, “most, if not all, of the existing policy decisions have been agreed with Xi. This applies to potential changes to the central bank governor, banking regulator and economic adviser.”

The Chinese yuan fell to a 15-year low of 7.3089 to the US dollar after China’s central bank appeared to ease in trying to counter market forces that were pushing the tightly controlled currency lower. The yuan fell as interest rate hikes in the United States encouraged banks and other traders to convert cash into dollars in search of higher yields.

In September, Chinese commercial banks were ordered by the People’s Bank of China to keep the exchange rate stable and not bet on a weakening yuan. But after the ruling party’s congress ended at the weekend, the central bank set the yuan’s starting price for trading on Tuesday at an unusually low level.

Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 1% to 27,250.28, while Seoul’s Kospi fell 0.1% to 2,235.07. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.3% to 6,798.60. India’s Sensex slid 0.5%, while Taiwan’s benchmark lost 1.5%.

On Wall Street on Monday, stocks extended their gains from a week ago as investors braced for a week of heavy earnings from big tech companies.

The S&P 500 rose 1.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.3% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite closed up 0.9%. The Russell 2000 Index climbed 0.4%.

Google’s parent company, along with Facebook’s parent company Amazon and Apple, all released their latest financial results this week. They are among the most expensive stocks in the benchmark S&P 500 and their earnings this week could spell big moves, up or down, for the broader market.

Several large companies outside the tech sector are also reporting earnings this week, including Coca-Cola, General Motors and Caterpillar.

Investors are looking for indications of the impact of inflation on various industries. Prices for everything from clothes to food remain at four-decade highs, prompting companies to raise prices and cut costs, while squeezing consumers.

The Federal Reserve and central banks around the world have raised interest rates to keep inflation under control, and those increases have weighed on more expensive stocks, like tech companies, by making lower-risk bonds more attractive in a stock market. volatile.

The Fed is expected to raise interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point at its next meeting in November.

Economists and investors fear that central banks could go too far in slowing economic activity, triggering a recession. They are looking for any signs that they might ease rate increases. The US economy is already slowing, contracting in the first half of the year.

The US government will release its third quarter gross domestic product report on Thursday.

In other exchanges, the dollar fell from 148.94 yen to 148.91 Japanese yen. The euro fell to 98.70 cents from 98.75 cents.

Benchmark U.S. crude fell $1.35 to $83.23 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international price standard, fell $1.22 to $89.99 a barrel.

___

AP Business Writer Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed.