(Bloomberg) — Stocks in Asia edged higher, while US equity futures pared declines Thursday as investors assessed the prospect of a recession on hardened expectations for more aggressive Federal Reserve monetary tightening after sizzling US inflation data.
An Asian share erased earlier losses as Chinese technology shares advanced. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 contracts shed about 0.2%. A volatile US session ended with modest losses, a resilience possibly rooted in speculation over whether the 9.1% consumer-price reading marks the peak. European contracts rose.
Read: Inflation Is Awful, Stocks Survive: Parsing the Tepid Reaction
Traders shifted toward expectations of an historic one percentage-point Fed interest-rate hike later this month. Fed Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic said “everything is in play” to combat price pressures.
Treasury two-year yields, sensitive to imminent Fed moves, climbed further while longer-maturity rates also went higher. The inversion between two-year and 10-year yields — a potential recession indicator — is the deepest since 2000.
The dollar advanced and the euro fell back toward $1 after briefly dipping below it Wednesday. Oil hovered at $96 a barrel. Bitcoin rallied past $20,000.
In Singapore, the city state’s currency strengthened on an unexpected tightening of monetary settings, part of a global wave of steps to curb the cost of living. Australian bond yields surged on a strong jobs report, which boosted the case for a further increase in borrowing costs.
The big question for markets is whether the latest US inflation print marks the peak. Commodity prices, pushed up this year in part by supply disruptions related to Russia’s war in Ukraine, have moderated somewhat of late.
But if higher costs prove to be persistent and come alongside a global economy buckling under rate hikes, that could be toxic for a range of assets already nursing heavy losses in 2022.
At this point, markets may be getting ahead of the Fed, according to Danielle DiMartino Booth, Quill Intelligence CEO and chief strategist. “We’ve got a 95 bps baked in ahead of the July 27 announcement,” she said on Bloomberg Television. “Now we need to move the discussion onto how long is the recession going to be, how deep it’s going to be,” she added.
Fed Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said in a Bloomberg Television interview the consumer-price report was uniformly bad and that the central bank will need to go well beyond the neutral level of rates. The figures don’t suggest a smaller hike than in June, she added.
Swaps referencing Fed meeting dates are priced for the policy rate to peak at about 3.7% this December, up from the current target range of 1.50%-1.75%. Traders then expect the Fed to start cutting rates, with more than three quarters of a percentage point of reductions priced in between the expected peak and the end of March 2024.
What to watch this week:
- Earnings due from JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Wells Fargo
- US PPI, jobless claims, Thursday
- China GDP, Friday
- US business inventories, industrial production, University of Michigan consumer sentiment, Empire manufacturing, retail sales, Friday
- G-20 finance ministers, central bankers meet in Bali, from Friday
- Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic speaks, Friday
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Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
- S&P 500 futures slid 0.1% as of 1:18 p.m. in Tokyo. The S&P 500 fell 0.5%
- Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.2%. The Nasdaq 100 fell 0.1%
- Japan’s Topix index added 0.2%
- South Korea’s Kospi index was steady
- Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index added 0.4%
- China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.3%
- Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index climbed 0.2%
- Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Tech Index surged 1.7%
- Euro Stoxx 50 futures rose 0.3%
Currencies
- The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.2%
- The euro fell 0.3% to $1.0033
- The Japanese yen was at 138.03 per dollar, down 0.5%
- The offshore yuan was at 6.7300 per dollar, down 0.1%
Bonds
- The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose about three basis points to 2.96%
- Australia’s 10-year bond yield climbed six basis points to 3.45%
Commodities
- West Texas Intermediate crude was at $96.77 per barrel, up 0.5%
- Gold fell 0.3% to $1,730.04 an ounce
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