Shares rose in Asia, sidestepping losses on Wall Street following hotter-than-expected core inflation that heightened the focus on the Federal Reserve’s next move. Japanese and South Korean stocks opened higher while those in Australia slipped. US equity futures also edged higher, after the S&P 500 fell 0.2% and the Nasdaq 100 dropped 0.1% Thursday. A … Read more
In a year in which little has gone right in the US bond market, November turned out to be a month for the record books. Investors frantically bid up the price of Treasuries, agency, and mortgage debt, sparking the best month since the 1980s and igniting a powerful pan-markets rally in everything from stocks to … Read more
Asian shares rebounded from 11-month lows on Thursday as a plunge in oil prices and softer U.S. labour data helped pull Treasury yields off 16-year peaks, although a looming U.S. payrolls report could make or break the rally. Tracking overnight gains on Wall Street, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.6%. Japan’s … Read more
By Catarina Saraiva Federal Reserve officials were cautiously optimistic about the US economic recovery at the central bank’s April meeting, with some officials signaling they’d be open to discussing scaling back the central bank’s massive bond purchases “at some point.” “A number of participants suggested that if the economy continued to make rapid progress toward … Read more
By Catarina Saraiva The Federal Reserve left interest rates near zero and signaled it would hold them there through at least 2023 to help the US economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic. The Federal Open Market Committee “expects to maintain an accommodative stance of monetary policy” until it achieves inflation averaging 2% over time and … Read more