Industry
Asian shares are expected to end a turbulent 2020 by approaching high rates on Thursday as more risky currencies move near 2-1 / 2-year peaks, bolstered by hopes that vaccine spread will help COVID-19 the world to get the pandemic.
PHOTO FILE: Pedestrians with face mask on display on an electric board showing off-break stock prices at an industrial area in Tokyo, Japan January 30, 2020. REUTERS / Kim Kyung-Hoon
Shares of HONG KONG / NEW YORK -Asian rose on Thursday and were poised to end a turbulent 2020 at peak levels, while growing investment hopes for a global economic recovery caused the dollar to fall more sharply. longer against most large currencies.
MSCI’s share of Asia-Pacific shares excluding Japan rose 0.1per percent to its latest peak, after re-exploring new territory late in the year. But year-end trading was generally sparse.
The index is set for a fourth-quarter gain of more than 19per percent, which would be the strongest three-month performance since 2009, and a shy year-over-year increase of 20per cents, which would be the highest since 2017.
“Much of the rise in the second half of the quarter was due to the evacuation of political risk,” said Kerry Craig, Global Market Strategy, JP Morgan Asset Management, announcing the U.S. election, hoping to ease trade tensions the US in China and the Brexit Treaty.
Looking to 2021, Craig said investors were trying to balance the potential for rising inflation against a similar economic recovery, and assess whether that reversal could be prevented early in the year with new strains of COVID-19 and struggling to roll out vaccines.
Chinese blue chips rose 1.45per percent on Thursday after official data showed that activity in China’s service and factory sector expanded in December, although both were at a slower pace than the previous month. The Hong Kong benchmark also rose 0.26per percent.
Shares in Australia fell 0.80per per cent after tighter movement restrictions were announced in a bid to eliminate new COVID-19 cases.
Markets in Japan and South Korea are on holiday.
E-Mini S&P futures rose 0.10per percent.
The sentiment, seen in overnight gains on Wall Street, impacted the “safe-harbor” dollar and supported almost all other major currencies.
The dollar fell against a basket of currencies, falling 0.074per percent to 89.528, after touching earlier since April 2018.
Oil prices reversed the trend, however, with a reversal as year-on-year inflation supplies forced some traders to fluctuate. seeing any economic recovery come to be gradual rather than rapid.
West West Texas intermediate crude shed 0.23per percent to trade at US $ 48.29 a barrel, far lower than around US $ 62 at the beginning of 2020, while Brent traded down 25 cents, or 0.5per per cent, at US $ 51.38.
Global crude oil markets lost about a fifth of their value in 2020 as tight coronavirus locks paralyze economic activity and travel, but prices have bounced strongly from their lows how governments implemented incentives.
Gold fell 0.14per percent to US $ 1,89.62 an ounce. The precious metal has risen more than 24 percent this year, the best year since 2010 when investors looked at safe havens and how the dollar slipped. There was little change in finance, with the U.S. 10-year benchmark yield at 0.9264per percent and the two-year yield at 0.1250per percent.
(Reporting by Alun John in Hong Kong and Koh Gui Qing in New York; Editing by Richard Chang and Kim Coghill)