Asia
China’s attempt at a recovery earlier this week was snuffed out today with a more than 1% fall in the Shanghai Composite Index.
Chinese economic data was in view – trade figures showed a 20% rise in imports in July year on year, compared with a 12% rise in exports. This is in local currency, which has weakened in July against the dollar – so much so that Beijing is expected to intervene in markets to prop up the yuan. China’s trade surplus in dollar terms fell again, to $28 billion, compared with nearly $40 billion in June.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng has recently tracked China’s stock market fortunes but today the market rose while Shanghai and Shenzhen fell.
Japan’s Nikkei and Topix indices were largely unchanged.
Europe
The FTSE 100 bucked the trend of weaker European exchanges, but this was at the expense of the pound, which hit a nine-month low against the euro and an 11-month low against the dollar
The blue-chip index managed a concerted effort to move above 7,700 points today.
The trend this week has for a FTSE 100 company to report earnings and its shares to either be the biggest riser or faller in the index. So it proved with gambling giant Paddy Power Betfair (PPB), whose earnings guidance for the full year was lowered. The company’s shares were down 3% on Wednesday morning.
North America
The biggest news in corporate America in the last 24 hours, at least as far as Twitter is concerned, was the tweet from Tesla (TSLA) founder Elon Musk about taking the company private at $420 dollars. The move sent the shares up sharply, leaving the company’s short sellers nursing further losses, and the announcement was controversial to say the least.
Companies reporting today include Sky (SKY) bidder Twenty-First Century Fox (FOXA).
In economics, crude oil and gasoline inventories are due after the market opens.