Wall Street stocks have ended little changed as investors kept to the sidelines ahead of Friday’s U.S. payrolls report for July.
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Facebook rose 1.85 dollars (£1.41), or 1.5%, to 124.36 dollars (£94.89), and Broadcom gained 2.88 dollars (£2.19), or 1.8%, to 166.99 dollars (£127.42).
Japan’s Nikkei advanced 0.3%, on track for a loss of 1.6% for the week. The trade-weighted index was little changed at 76.18 from 76.05. Singapore and the Philippines declined.
European shares rose, government bond yields fell and sterling weakened against the dollar and euro on Thursday after the Bank of England cut interest rates and restarted bond purchases in a bid to ease the economic hit from June’s vote to leave the EU. The bank also said it would purchase up to roughly C$102.5 billion of government bonds and about $17.1 billion of corporate bonds. “This is a timely, coherent and comprehensive package of measures”, he said. Germany’s DAX was up 0.7 percent and France’s CAC 40 gained 0.5 percent.
Echoing that, the Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC), chaired by the Bank’s governor, Mark Carney, also sought to reassure financial markets that there would be more easing to come this year.
“I think the highlight today is that even though global equities are more or less flat for the day, we’re seeing a pick up in risk appetite and the commodities space is doing well this morning”, said Scott Smith, regional director of hedging solutions at Cambridge Global Payments.
Wall Street shares were little changed as investors awaited Friday’s U.S. non-farm payrolls report for clues on the timing of the next Federal Reserve interest rate hike.
Economists polled by Reuters expect USA employers to have added 180,000 jobs, compared with 287,000 in June.
“We will also be passing on the reduction to mortgage customers on our Standard Variable Rate, which is already one of the lowest in the market and will reduce from 3.94 percent to 3.69 percent with effect from 1st September”.
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, but the labour market remains healthy and will probably continue to support economic growth for the remainder of this year.
The extensive series of measures was revealed with the central bank predicting that inflation would rise above its 2% target as a result of the falling value of the pound. The stock rose $1.19, or 11.4 percent, to $11.63. “The bigger picture is that wage growth will likely remain too week to create major cost pressures”, said Marcel Thieliant of Capital Economics in a report.
Brent crude LCOc1 settled up $1.19, or 2.76 percent, at $44.29 a barrel, while USA crude CLc1 settled up $1.10, or 2.69 percent, at $41.93. That suggests the economy could fall into or close to recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.
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The yen held steady at 101.20 per dollar, not far from Tuesday’s three-week high of 100.68 to the dollar. The euro edged up to $1.1134 from $1.1128.
