Asia
Thursday saw contrasting fortunes for Japanese and Chinese markets: the Nikkei pushed up over 100 points to 22,724, near to its 25-year high, while the CSI 300 index shed over 1% on a tech selloff which also dragged down Hong Kong’s Hang Seng. Hong Kong-listed Tencent (00700) fell over 3%. The current volatility of the Chinese stock markets is at odds with its economic performance: November’s manufacturing PMI came in above expectations and was higher than the previous month.
Europe
Optimism over progress in Britain’s EU negotiations continued to support sterling, which rose to $1.34 and €1.13, which pushed the FTSE 100 down further. The UK’s blue-chip index was down below 7,400 points in midmorning trading.
Insurer Aviva (AV) was in favour as its capital markets day upgraded prospects for earnings and dividends in the coming years. The shares were up 2% to 519p as chief executive Mark Wilson said: "We have significant surplus capital and cash and this means we will have GBP3 billion of excess cash to deploy in 2018 and 2019, GBP2 billion of which we plan to deploy next year.”
The company’s shares yield nearly 5% and the final dividend has been raised every year since 2012.
The FTSE 100 quarterly reshuffle will see Just Eat (JE), DS Smith (SMDS) and Halma (HLMA) promoted at the expense of Merlin (MERL), Convatec (CTEC) and Babcock (BAB) – which is the biggest faller on the FTSE 100 on Thursday morning.
In the eurozone, the Consumer Price Index for November came in above estimates at 1.1%, against a reading of 0.9% in October – a further sign of the region’s growing economic momentum.
Stock markets in Germany, France and Italy gained from the euro’s reversal against the pound, while Switzerland’s SMI was higher on upgraded GDP figures.
Oil companies were closely watched ahead of this month’s OPEC meeting, which is likely to see more output cuts agreed.
North America
US stock markets posted record highs on Wednesday night as the country’s GDP was revised higher.
A raft of economic data could provide further support today, with weekly jobless numbers and personal consumption expenditure (PCE) in focus. Next Friday sees the release of the closely watched non-farm payrolls numbers.
Bookseller Barnes & Noble (BKS) is one of the companies reporting earnings on Thursday.
Tomorrow sees the release of Canadian GDP, unemployment and manufacturing numbers.