Stocks Rise as Optimism Builds for Year-End Rally: Markets Wrap
(Bloomberg) — Stocks in Asia and Europe set the pace on Thursday, while US futures held gains as traders bet that a Federal Reserve interest rate cut will help drive a global rally into year-end.
Europe’s Stoxx 600 rose 0.3% as auto and industrial sectors outperformed. Asian equities pushed to their highest in more than two weeks, led by gains in Japanese heavyweights such as SoftBank Group Corp. The S&P 500 was set for an unchanged open after climbing in seven of the past eight sessions.
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Global bonds weakened, led by rising yields in Japan. Sentiment shifted as some senior government officials signaled they wouldn’t oppose a Bank of Japan rate hike this month. That reversed an earlier lift from a strong 30-year auction. The rate on 10-year US Treasuries rose one basis point to 4.08%.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, held above $93,000. The dollar was little changed.
Fed rate-cut expectations have fueled a broad rebound after November’s slump, with investors turning to defensive and other sectors as worries over stretched tech valuations persist. The small-cap Russell 2000 index is now just shy of a record high, while the Nasdaq 100 remains about 2% below its peak.
Prospects of lower rates and stable inflation are supporting the trend, said Amelie Derambure, senior portfolio manager at Amundi SA in Paris.
“We’re expecting a broadening of the rally for sectors that have so far been lagging,” she said. “The Russell is very sensitive to interest rates, so the figures reinforced the market’s idea that the Fed will be able to lower rates, in a non-recessionary context.”
Tech stocks staged a firm showing on Thursday. All the Magnificent Seven megacaps apart from Apple Inc. posted modest premarket gains. Salesforce Inc. climbed on signs that customers are embracing its artificial intelligence tools.
Traders will turn to a report on corporate job-cut announcements from Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. to look for further signs that the US labor market is softening. With official data still delayed, private indicators have increasingly pointed to employment coming under pressure from company belt-tightening and weaker spending.
Later on, initial jobless claims are expected to tick modestly higher.
Worries about the jobs market and expectations that President Donald Trump will choose a Fed chair who shares his dovish stance have shifted market pricing toward as many as four rate cuts through 2026.
Corporate News
Meta Platforms Inc. faces a full-scale antitrust investigation from the European Union as early as this week over how its AI features in WhatsApp may be harming competition, in the latest probe into Big Tech’s dominance on the continent. Cambricon Technologies Corp. plans to more than triple its production of AI chips in 2026, aiming to wrest market share from Huawei Technologies Co. in China and fill a void left by Nvidia Corp.’s forced exit. Novo Nordisk A/S left open the door for additional work on its pill version of Ozempic for Alzheimer’s disease after a pair of failed trials, saying that patients showed a biological response in a handful of areas despite getting no cognitive improvement. Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
S&P 500 futures were little changed as of 6:03 a.m. New York time Nasdaq 100 futures were little changed Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were little changed The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.3% The MSCI World Index rose 0.2% Currencies
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed The euro was little changed at $1.1668 The British pound was little changed at $1.3345 The Japanese yen rose 0.3% to 154.75 per dollar Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin fell 0.5% to $93,275.39 Ether rose 0.7% to $3,187.14 Bonds
The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced one basis point to 4.08% Germany’s 10-year yield was little changed at 2.76% Britain’s 10-year yield declined two basis points to 4.42% Commodities
West Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.6% to $59.30 a barrel Spot gold was little changed This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.
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