Geopolitical worries stay elevated after Finland announced that it will apply to join NATO
Wall Street stocks trimmed weekly losses on Friday in a relief rally after an aggressive sell-off. The Nasdaq Composite jumped 3.8%, its largest one-day percentage gain since 2020. The S&P 500 gained 2.4%, while the Dow Jones rose 1.5%. However, all three indexes finished below session highs and with weekly losses of at least 2%. In individual stocks, shares of Twitter finished nearly 10% lower on Friday after Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said that his deal to buy the social-media company is “temporarily on hold” pending details on the amount of fake accounts on the social-media platform.
Following the early ascent, Asian stocks closed mixed on Monday as investors reacted to ugly economic data out if China. The Shanghai Composite fell 0.34% after the data showed that industrial production contracted 2.9% year-on-year and retail sales plunged 11.1% in April. On the positive side, Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.45% while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.25% ahead of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s minutes from its May policy meeting due on Tuesday.
In Europe, equities opened lower at the start of the week after Friday’s modest advance. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index fell 0.5% in early deals, with telecoms bucking the trend to gain nearly 1%. Geopolitical worries in the region stay elevated after Finland announced that it will apply to join the military alliance NATO. Elsewhere, ECB Governing Council member Villeroy said that he expects a decisive policy meeting in June and an active summer.
Meanwhile, the USD index stays resilient just below twenty-year highs seen around the 105.00 figure last week. The buck continues to cling to the upper end of the extended trading range as risk-on tone abated at the start of the week. EURUSD has settled slightly above the 1.0400 figure during the early European deals, staying vulnerable to further losses despite more hawkish signals from the ECB.
