LONDON (Reuters) – Global stocks rose for the fourth consecutive day on Thursday as encouraging testing of the coronavirus vaccine kept investors’ spirits above what was expected to be a record rebound in job numbers in America later.
FILE PHOTO: The DAX chart of the German Stock Price Index is listed on the Frankfurt, Germany Stock Exchange on May 4, 2020. REUTERS / Staff
Economists polled by Reuters expect 3 million US jobs to be added in June, in addition to the 2.5 million created in May, and some generally reassuring data from Asia and Europe this week.
Despite the continued rise in virus cases worldwide, Asian stock markets saw their biggest daily rise in more than two weeks overnight, helped by the news that Germany’s Pfizer and BioNTech had tested a vaccine well. in early stage human testing.
Europe got off to a good start, with bank, travel and carmaker stocks generating 1-2% gains for its top assets, and the euro helped pull back to $ 1.13 on another dollar slide.
“The most important thing today is the US nonfarm payrolls … but overall it has been offered and the dollar has weakened,” said RBC FX strategist Alvin Tan.
“What has really helped sentiment (in the last 24 hours) have been some of the preliminary results of a vaccine.”
A vaccine for COVID-19 was long anticipated, which has now killed more than half a million people worldwide and sent the world economy into a deep recession.
In a sign, the positive sentiment will spread, E-minis for S & P500 rose 0.8%, while bond markets also favored security risk.
The yield on the 10-year German Bund surpassed -0.4% for the first time in a week in its biggest daily jump in a month after improving euro area manufacturing data the day before, while Portugal’s borrowing costs reached a minimum of 3 months.
All the major Asian indices had been bullish. Japan’s Nikkei rose only fractionally, but China’s blue chip index added 2% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 2.8% as investors rejected concerns about new security laws introduced by Beijing. .
WORK AGAINST VIRUSES
Attention quickly turned to U.S. employment figures later, fueling debate over whether the world’s largest economy can sustain its fragile recovery from rising COVID-19 cases in some key parts of the country.
“A better-than-expected result could help resolve the short-term debate that the US job market will recover relatively quickly and justify new highs in US equities,” said Stephen Innes, strategist at AxiCorp.
In commodities, the most-traded August copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange reached 49,570 yuan ($ 7,016.28) per ton, the highest of the year.
The main copper consumer, China, posted better-than-expected manufacturing data in June, while US manufacturing activity rebounded and the manufacturing sector in Germany contracted at a slower rate.
In Chile, where the number of COVID-19 cases has increased, miner BHP said it would begin to decrease production at its small Cerro Colorado copper mine.
Oil prices rose and gold declined as encouraging macro data led investors to take more risks.
Brent crude rose 30 cents to $ 42.37 a barrel. US crude rose 35 cents to $ 40.17 a barrel. Gold futures in the United States were 0.21% lower, at $ 1,776.20.
The dollar remained virtually unchanged against the Japanese yen at 107.45. The euro rose to $ 1.1293, the British pound rose to $ 1.2520 and the risk-sensitive Australian and New Zealand dollar were 0.3% and 0.5% stronger respectively.
Additional reports from Swati Pandey in Sydney; Editing by Jan Harvey
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