BANGKOK (AP) — Stocks rose Monday in Europe and Asia, where most markets were closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.
Germany’s DAX rose 0.1% to 15,058.49, while the CAC 40 in Paris also gained 0.1% to 7,002.30. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2% to 7,786.30. The S&P 500 future lost less than 0.1% while the Dow Industrial future was unchanged.
In Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index rose 1.3% to 26,906.04 as investors shrugged off comments by Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki that Japan faces a “dire without precedents” after spending heavily to counter the pandemic and other problems.
“Finance is the cornerstone of a country’s confidence,” Suzuki told lawmakers in parliament. “We must ensure fiscal space under normal circumstances to safeguard confidence in Japan and people’s livelihoods in times of crisis.”
Japan’s national debt, already more than double its gross domestic product, has grown further as the government failed for a decade to meet its targets to balance the budget.
Elsewhere in Asia, Sydney’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.1% to 7,457.30. In India, the Sensex rose 0.6% to 60,994.76. Bangkok’s SET index was flat. Shanghai and Shenzhen markets are closed for the whole week.
On Friday, a rally in technology shares that offset concerns about a weakening US economy helped push Wall Street’s benchmark indexes higher.
But, adjusting for a variety of factors, “investors have become somewhat cautious about continued weakness in economic data, and it’s clear they’re no longer treating bad news as good news,” said Avatrade.com’s Naeem Aslam. in a comment
“So going into this week that is full of firecrackers in terms of economic data and earnings, the focus will be whether we are going to see the US stock markets continue to go higher,” Aslam said.
In other trading on Monday, benchmark US crude oil was down 9 cents at $81.55 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It gained $1.03 to $81.64 a barrel on Friday.
Brent crude, the benchmark price for international trade, fell 17 cents to $87.46 a barrel.
The US dollar rose to 129.65 Japanese yen from 129.59 yen. The euro was trading at $1.0905, against $1.0868.
On Friday, the S&P 500 rose 1.9% to 3,972.61. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 1% to 33,375.49. The Nasdaq added 2.7% to close at 11,140.43.
Small company stocks also posted strong gains. The Russell 2000 Index rose 1.7% to close at 1,867.34.
Despite the gains, the benchmark index still ended with its first weekly loss in the last three.
Technology and communication services stocks drove much of the gains as investors cheered another big quarterly increase in Netflix subscribers.
Gains in technology-oriented stocks accounted for a large part of the S&P 500’s rally on Friday. Google’s parent company, Alphabet it said it was cutting costs by laying off 12,000 workers. His shares rose 5.3%.
Netflix reported an increase in its number of subscribers and saw its shares jump 8.5%.
Concerns that the economy cannot avoid a scarred recession loom over markets, although data showing inflation cooling suggests that the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes last year have begun to catch on. in the system.
On Friday, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he favors just a quarter-point hike on February 1, when the central bank presents its next interest rate policy update. Waller also said that rates are already high enough to slow the economy.
