Asia
The dollar’s ongoing weakness has made it hard for Asian equities to sustain their upbeat start to the year. While US stock markets rose yesterday as currency weakness made dollar-denominated assets attractive to global investors, Asian markets suffered the flipside. The US dollar’s drop through 110 yen took the edge off Japan’s Nikkei and Topix indices, which were off around 1%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng broke its recent winning streak with a drop of 1% or 300 points.
Europe
In the UK there was a flurry of corporate news, but not enough to move the FTSE 100 index in any strong direction, especially with the strong pound this week hitting dollar earners.
Currency and trade have been on the agenda at the World Economic Forum in Davos – US Treasury sector Steve Mnuchin said he was comfortable with a weaker dollar, and also said that the UK was “front of the queue” in terms of a post-Brexit trade deal. UK Chancellor Philip Hammond, on the other side, said he was “happy” with stronger sterling. Mnuchin later qualified his comments about the dollar, saying that in the long term he believed in a strong dollar.
Currency movements were at the heart Drinks giant Diageo (DGE)’s first-half trading update.
Profit before tax rose to £2.2 billion in the six months to 31 December 31, 6% higher than the same period in 2016. Sales rose 1.7% to £9.6bn, but revenue was held back by sterling’s rise and a later Chinese New Year – as well as ban on selling alcohol next to India’s busiest roads.
The company’s shares rose 1% to £25.60.
First-half results from UK broadcaster Sky (SKY) have been overshadowed by news of the competition regulator turning against the idea of 21st Century Fox (FOXA) buying the rest of the company it doesn’t already own. Revenue was up in the last six months of 2017, and customer “churn” was down amid a rise in UK and Ireland customers. Investors were cheered by the update, pushing the share above £10 a share as the company announced the end of the satellite dish in favour of online delivery.
In the eurozone, the Dax was the rare faller amid a general rise for Europe’s exchanges. Investors are focused on the European Central Bank’s upcoming announcement and news conference
North America
There is a substantial list of US companies reporting earnings this Thursday: highlights include 3M (MMM) and American Airlines (AAL).
There is also a raft of economic data to contend with, including monthly new home sales, weekly jobless figures and the advance goods trade balance for December. The week’s highlight is tomorrow’s US GDP data for the fourth quarter and for the whole of 2017.