MARKET SNAPSHOT
U.S. stocks ended mostly higher and Treasury yields were little changed as investors breathed a sigh of relief after tame producer-price data. The dollar edged higher. Oil prices declined as traders weighed risks of an Iranian attack on Israel. Gold prices climbed to another record high.
MARKET WRAPS
EQUITIES
Tech stocks led the market rebound, bouncing back after the prior session's inflation-induced selloff.
The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.7% to close at a new all-time high. The S&P 500 gained 0.7%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended flat.
"Investors just really, really, really want to own tech stocks," said Melissa Brown, head of applied research at SimCorp.
The latest wholesale price report offered some relief to investors on edge about inflation. The producer-price index rose 0.2% in March, lower than economists' expectations of 0.3%.
Wall Street continued to revise projections about the Fed's interest-rate policy. Bank of America said it now sees one rate cut this year, in December. It previously expected the Fed to begin lowering rates in June. Traders entered the year pricing in six or seven rate cuts in 2024, but now view one or two cuts as more likely, according to federal-fund futures. Some see no cuts at all this year.
Earlier Thursday, Chinese shares were mixed. China's trade and industrial activities surprised investors on the upside, though slowing inflation reflected underlying concerns about domestic demand, Citi analysts wrote.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index added 0.2% and the Shenzhen Composite Index edged up 0.1%. The ChiNext Price Index dropped 0.4%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index slipped 0.3%.
Japan's Nikkei Stock Average fell 0.4%, dragged by ebbing Fed rate-cut hopes.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.4% as bank stocks retreated amid increased uncertainty over the likely pace and timing of global interest-rate cuts.
New Zealand's NZX-50 shed 0.3% amid renewed uncertainty about whether global central banks will be in a position to cut rates anytime soon.
COMMODITIES
Oil futures finished lower, consolidating the previous session's gain, as investors weighed the potential for Iranian attacks in retaliation for a strike on the country's embassy in Syria that was attributed to Israel.
West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery fell 1.4% to settle at $85.02 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. June Brent crude lost 0.8% to settle at $89.74 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
Oil price benchmarks are "currently in a very supportive environment, as long as fears of a broader conflict in the Middle East remain unabated," Han Tan, chief market analyst at Exinity.
Front month Comex gold for April delivery gained 1.1% to settle at $2354.80 per troy ounce, a new record high.
TODAY'S TOP HEADLINES
Producer Prices Rise 0.2% in March in Favorable Surprise on Inflation
The March producer price index came in lower than expected on Thursday, the latest in a string of inflation surprises in 2024.
The basket of costs paid by domestic producers of goods, services, and construction rose by 0.2% in March from February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, versus economists' average estimate of a 0.3% increase and February's 0.6% growth. The PPI was 2.1% higher than a year earlier.
The core PPI, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.2% in March, matching the consensus call for a 0.2% rise. That compares with a 0.3% increase in February and equals the average monthly growth over the prior six months. It puts the year-over-year rise at 2.4% for the core PPI-the highest since September.
Fed's Williams sees inflation falling 'closer to' 2% target by next year, despite recent 'bumps'
The U.S. economy is in better balance, which will allow inflation to continue on a gradual path to the Fed's 2% annual-rate target, New York Fed President John Williams said Thursday.
"I expect inflation to continue its gradual return to 2%, although there will likely be bumps along the way, as we've seen in some recent inflation readings," Williams said in a speech to the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York.
At the same time, if the economy performs as expected, it will make sense for the Fed to start to "dial back policy restraint" by cutting its policy interest rate, Williams said.
Morgan Stanley's Wealth Arm Probed by Multiple Federal Regulators
Multiple federal regulators are probing Morgan Stanley over how it vets clients who are at risk of laundering money through the bank's sprawling wealth-management division.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and other Treasury Department offices are involved, according to people familiar with the matter. That is in addition to the Federal Reserve, whose similar probe The Wall Street Journal reported in November. The Fed has told the bank that supervisory action is under consideration.
The main issues regulators are looking at boil down to whether Morgan Stanley has been sufficiently investigating the identities of prospective clients and where their wealth comes from, as well as how it monitors its clients' financial activity. Some of the probes are focused on the bank's international clients.
Boeing Reveals Executives Got an Extra $500,000 in Private Jet Perks
An internal Boeing review found that Chief Executive David Calhoun and other top executives took personal trips worth more than $500,000 on the company's private jets and other planes that were improperly recorded as business travel.
The review and correction, which Boeing disclosed in a securities filing, was prompted by a Wall Street Journal investigation last year into the executives' use of the company's fleet of private jets, people familiar with the matter said.
Boeing's review found that some flights by the executives in 2021 and 2022 "were not previously classified as perquisites by the company but should have been classified as such in accordance with SEC rules and guidance," the company said in its proxy filing April 5.
Amazon CEO Touts AI Revolution While Committing to Cost Cuts
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said generative artificial intelligence could be one of the largest technological transformations in decades.
In his annual letter to shareholders, Jassy laid out a vision for how generative AI could be a critical building block in establishing the company's next pillar of growth following its online retail Marketplace, Amazon Prime and its cloud-computing unit Amazon Web Services.
"Generative AI may be the largest technology transformation since the cloud (which itself, is still in the early stages), and perhaps since the Internet," Jassy wrote in his letter Thursday. "This GenAI revolution will be built from the start on top of the cloud. The amount of societal and business benefit from the solutions that will be possible will astound us all."
Expected Major Events for Friday
00:00/SIN: 1Q Advance GDP Estimates
00:00/SIN: Singapore Monetary Policy Statement
01:00/SKA: Bank of Korea Monetary Policy Committee meeting and decision
04:30/JPN: Feb Revised Industrial Production
07:30/THA: Weekly International Reserves
09:59/CHN: Mar Broad Money M2
09:59/CHN: Mar Trade
09:59/CHN: Mar Commodities Trade Data
09:59/CHN: Mar Energy Trade Data
All times in GMT. Powered by Onclusive and Dow Jones.
Write to us at singaporeeditors@dowjones.com
We offer an enhanced version of this briefing that is optimized for viewing on mobile devices and sent directly to your email inbox. If you would like to sign up, please go to https://newsplus.wsj.com/subscriptions.
This article is a text version of a Wall Street Journal newsletter published earlier today.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 11, 2024 17:03 ET (21:03 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Comments