A roundup of trading on major world markets:
NEW YORK – Wall Street has ended mixed after a rally in Allergan Plc and other healthcare companies offset a decline in energy shares.
Five of 10 S&P sectors ended higher on Monday, led by the health sector’s 1.13 per cent increase, while energy and materials sectors both tumbled 1.25 per cent.
Allergan surged 5.98 per cent. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd said it still expected its $US40.5 billion acquisition of Allergan’s generic drug business to close in June.
Chevron Corp fell 1.48 per cent as US crude prices dropped 2.8 per cent and traders assessed the impact of wildfires on Canada’s oil output and a build in inventory.
A bigger-than-expected drop in China’s imports and exports in April pointed to weak demand in the world’s second-biggest economy and weighed on materials stocks.
Caterpillar dropped 3.52 per cent, weighing the most on the Dow industrials.
Investors remain cautious about corporate earnings. With first-quarter reports almost all in, earnings at S&P 500 companies, on average, fell 5.5 per cent while revenue was down 1.9 per cent, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
“I would give this earnings season a C or C-. While most of the companies were able to step over a greatly reduced bar of expectations, overall sales growth remains disappointing,” said Alan Gayle, senior investment strategist at RidgeWorth Investments in Atlanta, which has $US50 billion in assets under management.
The Dow Jones industrial average ended down 0.2 per cent at 17,705.91 points while the S&P 500 edged up 0.08 per cent to 2,058.69.
The Nasdaq Composite added 0.3 per cent to 4,750.21, helped by a 2.45-per cent rally in the Nasdaq biotech index .
LONDON – European stock markets bounced back from their worst week since early February with a more than one per cent gain on Monday, a rise in oil prices and strong economic numbers from Germany outweighing worries over China.
The pan-European FTSE 300 index, Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC all rose by more than 1 per cent.
“There’s a general improvement in risk sentiment, on the back of the higher oil price,” said Hantec Markets’ analyst Richard Perry.
“Safe-havens such as the Yen and gold are coming under pressure, and that is filtering through to push up equities.”
Still, the mood was not uniformly rosy.
The FTSE 100 fell 10.89 points, or 0.18 per cent, to 6,114.81 while Germany’s DAX rose 110.54, or 1.12 per cent, to 9,980.49.
HONG KONG – The Nikkei saw limited gains after after Japan’s finance minister said outright that Tokyo was ready to intervene in the currency market if yen moves were volatile enough to hurt trade and the economy.
The comments pushed the US dollar up to a 10-day high against the yen.
In a mixed day for stock markets, the yen’s falls helped generate some limited gains for the Nikkei, while a strong batch of industrial orders numbers out of Germany helped European shares recover from their worst week since mid-February.
But Shanghai sank almost three per cent after worse-than-expected Chinese trade numbers. Those added to the more general doubts about the pace of global growth and the likelihood of rises in interest rates in 2016 generated by Friday’s US jobs data.
An almost 15 per cent surge for the yen has been the big currency story of the past six months and traders remain sceptical over the chances of Tokyo making good on repeated threats to counter the move in the absence of global support.
Japan is the developed world’s most consistent interventionist on markets over the past two decades as it strives to find a way out of a cycle of low growth and low inflation.
But previous bouts of yen selling have tended to come with at least tacit blessing of its international partners and this time Washington seems opposed.
“Finance Minister Aso stated strongly that sudden yen strength or weakness is bad and that Japan has the means to intervene,” said Lee Hardman, a currency analyst with Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in London.
“He also attempted to alter market expectations that US opposition will prevent Japan from intervening. Overall, the comments do not significantly change our view that direct intervention to dampen yen strength remains unlikely in the near-term.”
The Nikkei rose 109.31 points, or 0.68 per cent, to 16,216.03, while the Hange Seng lifted 46.94 points, or 0.23 per cent, to 20,156.81 and Shanghai fell 64.74 points, or 2.07 per cent, to 3,065.62.
WELLINGTON – The S&P/NZX 50 Index dropped 13.05 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 6,885.06.
