LDN - Business

Shares jump on tech boost; fragile yen on intervention watch

[April 24, 2024] By Ankur Banerjee and Alun John

LONDON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) -World stocks rose on Wednesday led by tech names as investors' focus shifts to earnings from U.S. megacap bellwethers this week, while the yen remained mired near 34-year lows, keeping traders wary of intervention from Japanese authorities.

An after-hours surge in shares of electric vehicle maker Tesla, following its promise of new models, and upbeat earnings from some U.S. companies lifted sentiment, spurring a rally in tech stocks in Asia, where the sector rose 3.7% and Europe, where it gained 2.5%.

Europe's broad STOXX 600 was 0.2% higher, as that rally in tech stocks - also helped by a 10% surge in wafer maker ASM International on raised revenue forecasts - met soft earnings from drugmaker Roche and luxury goods maker Kering, whose shares fell to their lowest since 2017. [.EU]

Nasdaq futures were up 0.6%.

"It feels like this week is getting back to market fundamentals and earnings. At least temporarily, we are sidestepping geopolitics which have been impacting markets in the last two weeks," said Samy Chaar, chief economist at Lombard Odier.

Safe haven gold has fallen more than 4% since its Friday high, and is at $2.717.9 an ounce, albeit still not far from record peaks set earlier in the month.

Still to come in the earnings-packed week are results from tech giants Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Microsoft.

"The positive data in European PMIs will drive upward revisions to GDP consensus in Europe. In the U.S. the data, so far, is difficult to read," Chaar added.

DATA DIVERGENCE

Purchasing Managers Index surveys on Tuesday showed overall business activity in the euro zone and in Britain expanded at their fastest pace in nearly a year, while business activity cooled in the U.S.

That divergence helped the euro to nudge above $1.07 in Asia trade, its highest in more than a week, though it failed to hold and was last down 0.16% on the day at $1.0684.

"For once, US-eurozone divergence in data has come to the benefit of euro/dollar," said Francesco Pesole, currency strategist at ING, in a note.

"(Though) hard data - inflation and employment above all - has been the real drag on the pair so far, so caution is warranted when it comes to rallies prompted by activity surveys like PMIs."

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Pedestrians walk past an electric monitor displaying the Japanese yen exchange rate against the U.S. dollar outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan March 28, 2024. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo

U.S. gross domestic product figures and the March personal consumption expenditure data - the Fed's preferred inflation gauge - due later this week will be crucial for the dollar and for investors' attempts to gauge the path of U.S. rates.

Markets now see the first Federal Reserve rate cut coming in September, with expectations of 42 basis points of cuts this year. At the start of the year, traders had priced in 150 bps of easing for the whole year.

INTERVENTION ZONE

The drastic shift has elevated Treasury yields and lifted the dollar in the past few weeks, with pressure particularly being felt in Asia.

In the latest illustration, Indonesia's central bank delivered a surprise rate hike on Wednesday, stepping up efforts to support the rupiah currency.

The long-beleagured Japanese yen was last at 154.88 per dollar, trading at its lowest since 1990 ahead of the Bank of Japan's two-day policy meeting that concludes on Friday. The yen is down nearly 9% this year. [FRX/]

The dollar/yen pair, which is sensitive to U.S. yields, has traded in an extremely narrow range in the past few weeks, with traders wary that a push above 155 could raise the risk of dollar-selling intervention by Japanese authorities.

A senior official of Japan's ruling party told Reuters they were not yet in active discussion on what yen levels would be deemed worth intervening in the market, though the currency's slide towards 160 to the dollar could prod policymakers to act.

The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was at 4.627% on Wednesday, up a touch on the day, having dipped to as low as 4.568% on Tuesday following the economic data.

Oil prices were down slightly, with U.S. crude at $83.16 per barrel and Brent at $88.07. [O/R]

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee and Alun John; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Kim Coghill and Alex Richardson)

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