By Sin\u00e9ad Carew and Danilo Masoni <\/p>\n
NEW YORK\/ MILAN, July 15 (Reuters) – MSCI’s global equities index rose on Wednesday after a surprise drop in the U.S. inflation reading and a second day of strong earnings reports while oil futures turned lower even as \u200cU.S.-Iran hostilities showed no signs of abating. <\/p>\n
U.S. producer prices were softer than expected in June in another indication – along with consumer price data \u200creleased on Tuesday – that inflation was retreating before the recent escalation in the Middle East conflict. <\/p>\n
The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Wednesday that the Producer Price Index for \u200bfinal demand dropped 0.3% last month compared with economist forecasts that it would be unchanged. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the U.S. conducted a new wave of strikes against Iran’s coastal defence systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites on Wednesday after reimposing a naval blockade of Iranian ports, while Iran threatened to shut off more regional energy exports. <\/p>\n
Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments, a family investment office in New Vernon, New Jersey, suggested that while the latest inflation data was supporting stocks \u200con Wednesday, investors were ignoring concerns about Iran and \u2060the fact that June’s readings don’t reflect recent increases in oil prices. <\/p>\n
“We’re in a market phase where bad news doesn’t seem to hurt the market and bad news that isn’t quite as bad as we thought it would be really \u2060helps the market,” Meckler said. <\/p>\n
And Wednesday’s earnings reports also helped sentiment after Tuesday’s strong start to the reporting season from some Wall Street banks. Morgan Stanley on Wednesday reported a second-quarter profit increase from strong mergers and acquisitions activity. BlackRock’s quarterly profit rose, as a stock market rally boosted client asset values. And in healthcare, Johnson & \u200bJohnson’s \u200bsales and profit beat analyst expectations. <\/p>\n
At 11:44 a.m. ET (1545 GMT) the Dow Jones Industrial \u200bAverage rose 172.89 points, or 0.33%, to 52,681.16, the S&P 500 rose \u200c12.74 points, or 0.17%, to 7,556.33 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 86.70 points, or 0.33%, to 26,193.95. <\/p>\n
The MSCI World Price Index rose 5.20 points, or 0.46%, to 1,126.77 while the pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.12%. <\/p>\n
Earlier, South Korea’s tech-heavy KOSPI index closed up more than 6%, with memory chip maker SK Hynix jumping 8.8% in Seoul. However, its U.S.-traded shares were down almost 10% and the Philadelphia semiconductor index sank more than 3%. Earlier, Japan’s Nikkei gained 1.5%. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile in government bonds, U.S. Treasury yields fell with the benchmark 10-year Treasury note on track for its first consecutive daily declines in nearly three weeks, after economic \u200cdata showed an easing of price pressures for a second straight day. <\/p>\n
The yield on \u200bbenchmark U.S. 10-year notes fell 3.57 basis points to 4.549%, from 4.585% late on Tuesday while \u200bthe 30-year bond yield fell 1.98 basis points to 5.0742%. <\/p>\n
The 2-year \u200bnote yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Federal Reserve, fell 4.37 basis points to \u200c4.149%. <\/p>\n
In currencies, the dollar slipped against major currencies after the \u200bdata reinforced signs of easing inflation, supporting \u200bhopes that the Federal Reserve can remain patient on interest rates. <\/p>\n
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, fell 0.16% to 100.72, with the euro up 0.14% at $1.1435. <\/p>\n
Against the Japanese yen, the dollar weakened 0.07% to 162.11. <\/p>\n
Oil prices \u200bwere choppy as traders monitored the Middle East \u200chostilities and the prospects for energy shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. <\/p>\n
U.S. crude fell 0.98% to $78.56 a barrel and Brent fell to $83.80 per \u200bbarrel, down 1.1% on the day. <\/p>\n
Spot gold fell 0.11% to $4,048.79 an ounce. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sin\u00e9ad Carew in New York, Danilo Masoni in Milan and \u200bTom Westbrook in Singapore; Editing by Sharon Singleton, Timothy Heritage- and Ros Russell) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sin\u00e9ad Carew and Danilo Masoni NEW YORK\/ MILAN, July 15 (Reuters) – MSCI’s global equities index rose…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":937359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[12],"tags":[29220,64,54689,79,192684,377600,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-937358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-basis-points","tag-business","tag-earnings-reports","tag-economy","tag-global-equities","tag-rick-meckler","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116926065374795075","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}