| |
World Shares Lower Friday 05/15 04:43
World shares retreated Friday and South Korea's Kospi index gave up gains
after reaching an all-time high, as investors watch for developments from the
Iran war and as U.S. President Donald Trump wrapped up his summit in Beijing
with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
HONG KONG (AP) -- World shares retreated Friday and South Korea's Kospi
index gave up gains after reaching an all-time high, as investors watch for
developments from the Iran war and as U.S. President Donald Trump wrapped up
his summit in Beijing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
U.S. futures were down after Wall Street reached fresh records.
In early European trading, Britain's FTSE 100 traded 1.2% lower at
24,092.41. France's CAC 40 also fell 1.2% to 7,987.27, while Germany's DAX
dropped 1.5% to 24,092.41.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 fell 2% to 61,409.29 after rising briefly earlier in the
day. South Korea's Kospi lost 6.1% to 7,493.18 on investors' profit-taking,
after crossing the 8,000 mark for the first time and reaching 8,046.78, in part
powered by excitement around the artificial intelligence boom.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 1.6% to 25,962.73, while the Shanghai
Composite index fell 1% to 4,135.39.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 dipped 0.1% to 8,630.80.
Taiwan's Taiex was 1.4% lower while India's Sensex was up 0.1%.
Trump wrapped up his China visit on Friday after a series of meetings with
Xi that touched on issues including U.S.-China trade, further economic
cooperation and Taiwan. Investors are monitoring trade deal updates on areas
such as American soybeans, beef and airplanes as Xi warned Trump that
differences over Taiwan could lead to clashes and conflict.
While there is some optimism over U.S.-China relations, some analysts
suggest any deals should be looked at with a sense of caution.
They recalled how a number of the promised projects and investments that
came out of U.S.-China deals from Trump's last China visit in 2017 did not end
up materializing, as tensions between Washington and Beijing rose in the
following years.
"Headline deals should be looked at with a healthy degree of skepticism,"
wrote Leah Fahy and Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economists at Capital
Economics, in a Friday note.
Trump also said in an interview that China could buy U.S. oil, more than a
year after China effectively stopped buying crude oil from the United States
following Trump's imposition of hefty trade tariffs last year. Trump said Xi
told him China "would like to be of help" in brokering an end to the Iran war.
Oil prices climbed more than 3% early Friday, as U.S.-Iran talks on
permanently ending the Iran war stalled, and after a ship anchored off the
United Arab Emirates was seized and another cargo ship near Oman was attacked.
Brent crude, the international standard, was 3.2% higher at $109.11 per
barrel. It was trading at around $70 a barrel before the war in Iran started in
late February.
Benchmark U.S. crude was up 3.7% to $104.94 per barrel.
Global energy flow has remained constrained with the Strait of Hormuz,
crucial for global oil and gas transit, still largely closed and as the U.S.
imposed a sea blockade on Iranian ports since last month. The White House said
on Thursday after a bilateral meeting between Trump and Xi that both sides
agreed the Strait of Hormuz must remain open.
On Thursday, Wall Street shares gained with the benchmark S&P 500 rising
0.8% to 7,501.24 and hitting an all-time high for a second consecutive day.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 0.7% at 50,063.46, the
first time it closed at above the 50,000 level since the Iran war. The
technology-heavy Nasdaq composite climbed 0.9% to 26,635.22.
Shares of technology giant Cisco Systems jumped 13.4% following
better-than-reported results and after the company said it was cutting fewer
than 4,000 jobs. Nvidia rose 4.4% as investors' hopes grew over updates on
sales of its advanced H200 chips to Chinese firms as CEO Jensen Huang visited
Beijing with Trump.
In other dealings, the U.S. dollar rose to 158.54 Japanese yen from 158.37
yen. The euro was trading at $1.1622, down from $1.1669.
|
|
