Stocks on Wall Street drifted lower with little on the tariff front to whip markets around.
The S&P 500 was down 0.1% in afternoon trading, unwinding earlier gains as strong earnings from Bank of America and Citigroup bolstered financial stocks, while Boeing pared losses as Beijing told Chinese airlines not to place new orders with the US plane-maker and to seek approval for any aircraft before taking delivery of existing orders.
Trans-Atlantic talks for bilateral European Union-US trade haven’t made any headway yet, while JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon threw his weight behind Treasury secretary Scott Bessent to negotiate the deals with US allies.
“Markets have been relatively calm compared to recent weeks, with only a couple of negative trade war-related headlines to digest,” Bank of New Zealand senior market strategist Jason Wong said in a note. “While the US dollar is broadly stronger overnight, the NZ dollar has sustained much of the rally seen during local trading hours that saw it trade with a 59 US cents handle for the first time this year.”
The kiwi dollar traded at 58.97 cents at 7am in Auckland from 59.23 cents yesterday.
Meta Platforms and Alphabet were the weakest of the Magnificent 7 megastocks as the Facebook-owner’s chief executive Mark Zuckerburg testified at the court hearing seeking to carve up the social media giant. Meanwhile, Google’s parent is coming under closer scrutiny by Japan’s antitrust regulator.
European lifestyle
Stock markets across the Atlantic were broadly stronger, with the UK’s FTSE 100 up 1.4% and Germany’s DAX gaining 1.4%. France’s CAC 30 rose 0.9%, with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s weaker-than-expected result catching up with it as the luxury goods maker sank 7.8%.
French ad agency Publicis rallied after its first-quarter growth beat expectations, indicating that its clients are navigating the uncertain environment and continuing to spend on marketing.
That ambivalent sentiment looks sent to continue into the Asian trading session, with Australian futures pointing to a 0.1% gain for the S&P/ASX 200 index today.
Milk prices rose at the latest Global Dairy Trade auction, with the GDT price index up 1.6% and the average winning price at US$4,385 a tonne, with the average whole milk powder price up 2.8% at US$4,171 a tonne.
There’s no major local data today, with March quarter inflation figures on Thursday the main economic release.
Kiwifruit grower Seeka is holding its annual meeting in Te Puke today.
Reporting by Paul McBeth. Image from Luca Cavallin on Unsplash.
