Asia
Progress in trade talks between the United States and Europe helped US markets rise towards the close on Wednesday, but this failed to translate into positive price moves for Asia-Pacific benchmarks. China’s Shanghai Composite Index, which dropped into bear market territory last month, fell back 2,900 points on Thursday as a recent rally petered out.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, which had also been building up some modest gains this week, tracked Chinese equities lower.
A stronger Japanese yen put pressure on domestic equities again ahead of next week’s Bank of Japan policy meeting, which is expected to contain some clues about the likely end to the country’s monetary easing. The central bank is behind the curve in the developed work, with even the European Central Bank – which meets today – setting out a clearly defined to the end of quantitative easing.
Europe
But the ECB is not expected to spring any surprises today, although Mario Draghi’s press conference will be closely watched, as always, by currency traders. The euro to dollar exchange rate has been stable within a 1.16-1.17 band in recent weeks but the story so far this year has been the dollar’s resurgence after a long period of euro strength.
European equities were buoyed by Wall Street’s late rise, although the FTSE 100 struggled to advance in midmorning trading and was seen at 7,654 points.
A long list of results by FTSE 100 stalwarts kept investors occupied. Share price reactions did not track the tone of the results though: Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB) shares fell despite strong profits and a $25 billion share buyback programme, while AstraZeneca (AZN) was higher despite a fall in sales and profits as generic competition bites.
North America
Facebook’s (FB) shocking 20% slide in after-hours trading is expected to unsettled the Nasdaq at the open on Thursday. Amazon (AMZN) is up next today with its quarterly earnings but a multi-billion dollar slide in its share price is unlikely. So far tech earnings from Microsoft (MSFT) and Google parent company Alphabet (GOOGL) have set the bar high, so Facebook’s underperformance – at least in terms of monthly user growth rather than earnings per share – stood out.
In economics, weekly jobless claims will be in view, as well as durable goods orders for June. The highlight of the week, however, is the second quarter GDP number tomorrow, which is expected to show strong growth of the US economy.