GLOBAL MARKETS-Dollar slips, stocks ease on fresh doubts on trade deal

The dollar slipped and global equity markets traded little changed on Monday, halting a rally that lifted a key index to just under a new high, after a media report cast fresh doubts on reaching phase one of a U.S.-China trade deal. The safe-haven Japanese yen gained and gold prices erased losses after a CNBC report said the mood in Beijing about a trade deal is pessimistic due to U.S. President Donald Trump's reluctance to roll back tariffs on Chinese imports.

Stocks on Wall Street were down slightly, halting a rally that had pushed the three major U.S. indexes to record highs on Friday. The dip left MSCI's all-country world index up 0.11%, close to a peak set in January 2018. Chinese state media Xinhua over the weekend said that Washington and Beijing had held "constructive" talks.

"There is some good news that's baked into this market, so when we get bad news this market's going to roll over," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York. Mazen Issa, the senior FX strategist at TD Securities in New York, said the market over-reacted to the report, as there was nothing substantive that suggested the deal is off or on. "It's just the ebb and flow" of the news cycle, he said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2.03 points, or 0.01%, to 28,006.92. The S&P 500 lost 1.57 points, or 0.05%, to 3,118.89 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 14.25 points, or 0.17%, to 8,526.58. In Europe, the pan-European STOXX 600 index lost 0.22% and the FTSEurofirst 300 index of leading regional shares fell 0.20%.

Investors hope that tariffs the United States and China have imposed on each other's goods will be rolled back as they are seen as harming global economic growth. Overnight in Asia, stocks closed higher.

Tokyo's Nikkei gained 0.49% and China's blue-chip CSI300 index rose 0.8% after the People's Bank of China in a surprise move said it was lowering the seven-day reverse repurchase rate. The dollar index fell 0.31%, with the euro up 0.33% to $1.1086. The yen strengthened 0.21% versus the greenback at 108.56 per dollar.

Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes last rose 9/32 in price to yield 1.8032%. Spot gold was up 0.2% at $1,470.12 an ounce.

Concerns about plentiful crude supplies in 2020 also weighed on the oil market, which expects the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to extend production cuts in early December to help avoid a new global glut. Brent crude futures fell 50 cents to $62.80 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude slid 39 cents to $57.33 a barrel.

 

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)