Stock market today: Asian shares mostly rise to start a week full of earnings, Fed meeting
TOKYO — Asian shares mainly rose on Tuesday as investors kept their eyes on potentially market-moving reports expected later this week.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 1.0% to 38,300.49 in afternoon trading after a national holiday. Sydney’s S&The P/ASX 200 rose 0.2% to 7,655.60. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.5% to 2,700.82. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.2% to 17,709.57, while the Shanghai Composite fell 0.2% to 3,105.64.
On Wall Street, the S&The P500 rose 16.21 points, or 0.3%, to 5,116.17, marking its best week since November. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 146.43, or 0.4%, to 38,386.09, and the Nasdaq composite gained 55.18, or 0.3%, to 15,983.08.
About a third of companies in the S&P500, including heavyweights Amazon and Apple, will report this week how much profit they made during the first three months of the year. With about half of the companies in the index reporting year to date, quarterly results are largely better than expected.
Solid earnings reports last week helped the S&P500 rallies to its first winning week in four. According to FactSet, companies in the index appear to be on track for a third straight quarter of earnings per share growth.
The stock market will need such strength after a shaky April. The S&The P500 fell as much as 5.5% over the month as signals of persistently high inflation forced traders to adjust their expectations for when the Federal Reserve might start easing interest rates.
After predicting six or more rate cuts this year through 2024, traders now expect just one rate cut, data from CME Group shows.
When the Federal Reserve announces its latest policy decision on Wednesday, no one expects it to raise its key interest rate, which is at the highest level since 2001. Instead, the hope is that the central bank can provide some clues as to when the first rate cut will occur. tariffs could come.
At this week’s Fed meeting, no forecasts from Fed officials will be released about the path they expect in the coming years. The latest set of forecasts, released in March, showed that the typical Fed official at the time had planned three cuts by 2024.
But Fed Chairman Jerome Powell could offer more color at his news conference after the central bank’s decision. He suggested earlier this month that rates could remain high for longer as the Fed waits for more evidence that inflation is on a sustained decline toward its 2% target.
A report hitting Wall Street on Friday could further change policymakers’ prospects. Economists expect Friday’s jobs report to show that hiring by U.S. employers fell in April and worker wage growth remained relatively stable.
The hope on Wall Street is that the labor market will remain strong enough to help the economy avoid a recession, but not so strong that it puts upward pressure on inflation.
On the bond market, the yield on ten-year government bonds fell from 4.67% at the end of Friday to 4.61%.
In energy trading, U.S. crude fell 26 cents to $82.37 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 16 cents to $88.24 a barrel.
In currency trading, the US dollar rose from 156.28 yen to 156.72 Japanese yen. The euro cost $1.0704, up from $1.0725.