NEW YORK\/LONDON (Aug 16):\u00a0Global\u00a0stocks were flat but still traded near record highs on Friday as US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin\u00a0held high-stakes talks\u00a0in Alaska over Ukraine.<\/p>\n
US\u00a0Treasury bond prices fell across the board with\u00a0markets\u00a0anticipating a Federal Reserve (Fed) interest rate cut.<\/p>\n
The Dow hit an intra-day record high\u00a0during the\u00a0session, becoming the last of Wall Street’s main indices to\u00a0climb to\u00a0a new peak this week.\u00a0The benchmark\u00a0S&P 500 and the Nasdaq dropped, dragged down mainly by technology, financials, industrials and utilities stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.08%, the S&P 500 fell 0.29% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.40%.<\/p>\n
“This market continues to move higher and the story is just earnings and margins,” said Talley Leger, the chief market strategist of The Wealth Consulting Group in New Jersey.<\/p>\n
“The inflation numbers that we saw this week were mostly services and in a services-based economy like ours, this is good for profit margins.”<\/p>\n
Data showed that US\u00a0retail sales\u00a0increased solidly\u00a0in July, rising 0.5% from the prior month, after an unexpected spike in\u00a0producer price\u00a0data on Thursday renewed inflation concerns and pared market expectations for Fed rate cuts this year.<\/p>\n
European shares touched a near five-month high before pulling back, as investors drew\u00a0encouragement\u00a0from a largely positive earnings season. The pan-European STOXX 600 index finished flat at 0.06%.<\/p>\n
The MSCI All Country World Index consolidated recent gains.\u00a0It was\u00a0last flat at 951.70, just shy of the record level of 954.21 set on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Trump and Putin\u00a0met face to face\u00a0in Alaska in a high-stakes meeting that could determine whether a ceasefire can be reached in the deadliest war in Europe since World War Two.<\/p>\n
Trump\u00a0has said a second summit involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy could follow if the talks\u00a0with\u00a0Putin\u00a0go\u00a0well.<\/p>\n
Details and the longevity of any agreement will be key, and for now investors are on standby.\u00a0Ukraine’s government bonds \u2014 key indicators of the mood \u2014 have\u00a0largely stalled in recent days\u00a0at a still-distressed 55 cents on the dollar.<\/p>\n
“There’s still a small degree of risk premium in European\u00a0markets\u00a0because of the war. Any type of resolution will ultimately pare that back,” said Shaniel Ramjee, a co-head of multi-asset at Pictet Asset Management, adding that oil and other commodity prices could also react.<\/p>\n
“But I think that the market has learnt not to expect too much from these negotiations. Ultimately, Zelenskiy and the Europeans are not invited. They will need to be involved in any final negotiations,”\u00a0Ramjee added.<\/p>\n
The two-year note yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Fed, rose 1.1 basis points to 3.751%, paring earlier losses. The yield on benchmark US\u00a010-year notes rose 2.7 basis points to 4.32%.<\/p>\n
In currency\u00a0markets, the dollar weakened 0.38% to 146.72 against the Japanese yen and was down 0.15% at\u00a00.806 against the Swiss franc. The euro was\u00a0up 0.48% at US$1.1702.<\/p>\n
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was last trading down 0.34% at 97.85.<\/p>\n
Japanese\u00a0gross domestic product data\u00a0released on Friday showed the economy expanding by an annualised 1.0% in the April-to-June\u00a0quarter, beating analyst estimates.<\/p>\n
Brent crude fell 1.5% to settle at US$66.85 (RM281.64) per barrel. US\u00a0crude fell 1.8% to settle at US$62.80.<\/p>\n
Spot gold rose 0.09% to US$3,338.65 an ounce. US\u00a0gold futures settled almost flat at US$3,382.60.<\/p>\n
Cryptocurrency\u00a0markets\u00a0stabilised after bitcoin touched a record US$124,480.82 on Thursday. It was down 0.78% at US$117,033.52.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK\/LONDON (Aug 16):\u00a0Global\u00a0stocks were flat but still traded near record highs on Friday as US President Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,63,99,171],"class_list":{"0":"post-73752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-markets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}