LONDON: Global shares hovered around three-month highs on Wednesday and the dollar found support as investors tempered some of their earlier enthusiasm about the prospect of the start of a series of US interest rate cuts.
The MSCI All-World index fell 0.1 per cent, down for a second day following the decline on Wall Street, after minutes from the Federal Reserve's most recent meeting offered little new insight into policymakers' thinking on rates.
Overnight, the S&P 500 snapped a five-session winning streak and fell 0.2 per cent. Chipmaker Nvidia reported revenue well above Wall Street expectations after the market close, but shares fell 1.7 per cent due to the company's downbeat China sales outlook.
Nasdaq futures fell 0.3 per cent in European trading, while those on the S&P 500 were down just 0.1 per cent. Volumes are likely to be light through the rest of the week because of Thursday's Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.
"We're just at that moment where the market is consolidating and particularly ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, we wouldn't expect to see any big moves over the coming days," City Index market strategist Fiona Cincotta said.
The Fed minutes showed policymakers pledged to "proceed carefully" from here, which traders did not interpret as new information, and also contained no confirmation that policymakers had ruled out more rate hikes.
"They couldn't whisk that off the table completely. That would have created a rather larger market move," Cincotta said. "That's where we are in the market - broadly speaking, it's supportive of stocks and broadly speaking, unsupportive for the US dollar," she said.
The dollar index was up 0.25 per cent on the day, rising for a second consecutive session, but is still on track for its worst monthly performance in a year, with a drop of 2.7 per cent.
The MSCI global shares index, meanwhile, is up 8.2 per cent in November, marking its biggest monthly rally since late 2020, and at its highest since mid-August.
Ten-year Treasury yields were marginally lower at 4.41 per cent. They have fallen about 50 basis points since the Fed held rates steady early in the month.
Interest rate futures markets see almost no chance the Fed hikes again and price about 90 basis points of rate cuts through 2024, with a 30 per cent chance they begin as soon as March.
"Since the (Fed) believes that a soft landing is in sight, it would be foolish to risk it by hiking further than necessary," said Rabobank's senior US strategist Philip Marey.
"If we were to see stronger economic and inflation data before the December meeting, longer-term rates are likely to rebound and substitute for a rate hike. Therefore we do not expect further hikes."
In currencies, the dollar, which has been sliding since last week's benign US inflation report, lifted from multi-month lows against a number of other currencies.
It was a touch firmer against the euro at $1.0897 and up 0.5 per cent against the yen at 149.13 yen. "We expect bond yield gaps to remain a tailwind for the yen and renminbi as inflation in the US continues to moderate and investors discount more rate cuts from the Fed," said Jonathan Petersen, senior economist at Capital Economics.
China's yuan, which has gained 2 per cent in the past week, was down 0.2 per cent at 7.1575 against the dollar. China's major state-owned banks have been buying the yuan to hasten its recovery lately, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
British Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt will present his autumn budget later in the day that is expected to contain plans for tax cuts for businesses. Investors will be watching closely to see how any give-aways affect the UK's borrowing plans, which could impact sterling and government bond yields .
The pound was last down 0.1 per cent against the dollar at $1.2525 and down 0.1 per cent against the euro at 87.12 pence.
In commodities, Brent crude futures fell 0.4 per cent to $82.17 a barrel, while copper futures fell 0.5 per cent to $8,404 a tonne, having touched a two-month high on Tuesday.
Bitcoin rose 2.2 per cent to $36,573, recovering from an overnight low of $35,651 after Binance chief Changpeng Zhao stepped down and pleaded guilty to breaking US anti-money laundering laws as part of a $4.3 billion settlement resolving a years-long probe into the crypto exchange. Binance's own token was up 5.3 per cent on the day at $237.30, having lost nearly 10 per cent the previous day in its largest one-day slide in year. - Reuters
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