Oil rose 1.1 per cent to $33.64 a barrel and contracts on Brent crude advanced 1.5 per cent to $34.25 in London.
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Chinese equities bounced on another day of volatility across Asia on Friday as investors were panicked by Beijing’s attempts to stabilize its beleaguered markets, with growing fears the global economy could be teetering.
A source close to the CSRC said the regulators had considered the differences between Chinese and the US markets and thought they could tweak the rules to suit domestic conditions.
In the background there are also question marks over whether another bout of turbulence from China, accompanied by a broader “hard landing” for the economy, could stay the U.S. Federal Reserve’s hand on further rises in interest rates this year.
In apparent response, markets closed up 2 percent. The gains narrowed losses for the week to 7.5 percent. From Saturday, shareholders holding more than 5% of a company’s shares will not be able to sell more than 1% of the company’s shares within any three-month period, and will have to publicise their plans 15 trading days beforehand.
“The big concern right now is what’s happening overseas, particularly in China”, said Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird, which oversees $110 billion.
Shenzhen is now 17% off its December 23 high, nearing bear market territory. Treasuries and the yen headed for their first declines this week and gold dropped. In Europe, the pan European Stoxx 600 index was around 0.45 percent higher on Friday morning. That compares with the median forecast of 6.65 per dollar.
The People’s Bank of China set the yuan’s daily fixing at 6.5636 per dollar.
Frankfurt’s DAX 30 index was up 0.6% at 10,037.6 in midday trade.
China also culled the circuit breakers that caused shares trading to be suspended twice in four days.
On the currency front, Chinese yuan remained the talk of the town owing to the devaluation by People’s Bank of China (PBOC). “They may want to keep the yuan stable for a while to help calm the stock market”. On Friday, that benchmark gained 3 percent at the opening, then fell to a 4.3 percent loss before recovering.
The Shanghai Composite added 2 percent, paring its weekly decline to 10 percent, still its biggest loss since August previous year. Output, adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation, slid 0.3 percent from October, data from the Economy Ministry in Berlin showed.
The Australian dollar, which was impacted negatively this week since China is a major trading partner of Australia, rose back above $0.7070 per United States dollar.
The euro fell after German industrial production unexpectedly dropped in November.
A decline to 7.7 per dollar, from about 6.6, is needed to boost gross domestic product expansion by 0.7 percentage point, according to estimates by Bloomberg Intelligence Economics.
-U.S. manufacturing imports are also contracting at the fastest pace that we have seen since the last recession. This is partly driven by PBOC which guided the yuan lower intentionally and set the reference rate to the weakest level since April 2011.
The yen stood near Thursday’s 4 1/2-month high of 117.33 yen, last trading at 117.64 yen.
India’s rupee and South Africa’s rand led gains in emerging-market currencies, climbing at least 0.4 per cent against the dollar.
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With assistance from Neil Denslow, Emma O’Brien, Anna Kitanaka, Joseph Ciolli and Dani Burger.
