Jamie McGeever
8 min read
By Jamie McGeever
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - TRADING DAY
Making sense of the forces driving global markets
By Jamie McGeever, Markets Columnist
Wall Street rally evaporates
Investors drew breath on Thursday from the recent selling across markets fueled by weakness in long-dated government debt, and pushed up stocks, the dollar and bond prices. But Wall Street's rebound lacked conviction and fizzled out, pointing to a lackluster open on Friday.
In my column today I look at the dollar. There is no shortage of economic fundamental reasons to be bearish in the long term, but perhaps the recent selling has gotten a little excessive. More on that below, but first, a roundup of the main market moves.
If you have more time to read, here are a few articles I recommend to help you make sense of what happened in markets today.
1. U.S. says it agreed with Japan that dollar-yen reflectsfundamentals 2. U.S. 're-industrialization' could haunt Treasuries: MikeDolan 3. U.S. Treasuries sell-off remains orderly, IMF says 4. Global bond markets signal governments must pay more toborrow long-term 5. U.S. House narrowly passes Trump's sweeping tax-cutbill, sends on to Senate
Today's Key Market Moves
* U.S. stocks succumb to a wave of late selling and giveup most of their earlier gains. The Dow and S&P 500 end flat,and the Nasdaq rises 0.3%. * Treasury yields ease as much as 6 basis points, but notbefore the 30-year yield hits a 19-month high of 5.16%. * Britain's 30-year yield climbs to 5.60%, nearing April's35-year high of 5.65%, after weaker-than-expected UK fiscaldata. * Oil prices fall for a third day, dragged lower by areport that OPEC+ is discussing a production increase for July. * Bitcoin notches another record high, rising for a thirdstraight day to $112,000.
Selloff on nervy hold
The relative calm across markets on Thursday came amid purchasing managers' index data that showed the downturn for British and Japanese firms eased in May, and U.S. business activity accelerated amid a truce in the trade war between Washington and Beijing.
Investors latched onto the 'activity' side of the U.S. report, and parked to one side the 'prices' data that showed rising prices of imported goods for companies and consumers. Inflationary pressures are intensifying.
Asian markets open on Friday to the latest producer price inflation figures from South Korea, and consumer inflation data from Singapore and Japan. The figures from Tokyo are expected to show Japan's core inflation rose in April at its fastest pace in two years, adding to pressure on the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates.
