People are seen outside the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., (Photo : REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo)
The dollar hit a one-year high versus the yen as technology stocks led Wall Street and a key gauge of global equities higher on Wednesday ahead of an announcement by President Joe Biden of a multitrillion-dollar plan to rebuild America's infrastructure.
The relentless rise of U.S. bond yields, with 10-year yields on course for their biggest quarterly rise since the fourth quarter of 2016, earlier weighed on sentiment even as Chinese data suggested a solid global economic recovery.
Big tech surged on Wall Street, with Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, Tesla Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Facebook Inc pushing the benchmark S&P 500 to a fresh peak and lifting the Nasdaq 2% higher at one point.
In Europe, shares closed slightly lower. The regional STOXX 600 index fell 0.2%, but posted its second straight month of gains and best since April 2020. Britain's blue-chip FTSE 100 index fell 0.9% as online food delivery firm Deliveroo fell 30% on its first day of trading.
U.S. private employers hired the most workers in six months in March as more Americans got vaccinated against COVID-19 and pushed the economy toward a broader reopening, which is expected to unleash a strong wave of pent-up demand in coming the months.
The ADP National Employment Report was slightly below economists' expectations, but the jump in hiring aligned with a recent improvement in labor market conditions.
For a graphic on Deliveroo shares plunge in London debut:
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/jznpngamxvl/Deliveroo.png
Credit Suisse extended declines for a third day, down 4.9%, on worries about its losses linked to the downfall of Archegos Capital, which defaulted on margin calls earlier this week.
But focus for much of the quarter has been on the surge in bond yields, making equity valuations look lofty, particularly for the major tech companies that bore the brunt of the recent sell-off.
On Wednesday, 10-year Treasury yields rose as high as 1.753%, after initially being pushed down on demand from traders rebalancing their portfolios for quarter-end.
Euro zone bonds calmed, but Germany's 10-year yield was set for its biggest quarterly jump since the fourth quarter of 2019.
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, in a Bloomberg TV interview on Wednesday, defied investors who have been pushing up borrowing costs on the euro zone's bond markets to test the ECB's resolve.
Investors awaited details from Biden's push for a "Build Back Better" infrastructure plan to be announced in Pittsburgh. Its price tag could be as high as $4 trillion to pay for conventional roads and bridges while also tackling climate change and domestic policy issues like income equality.
Talk of tax hikes in 2021 is premature and is creating a lot of apprehension as investors grapple with the question of how long will the economic recovery trade last, said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco in New York.
"All these spending initiatives that are being talked about are all coming with price tags of higher taxes. That's a hard pill to swallow when the economy is still very much getting its sea legs and is still very much in recovery mode," Hooper said.
The plans have a tortuous journey in Congress and likely will look very different once all the political wrangling is done, said James Athey, investment director at Aberdeen Standard Investments.
"If investors are weighing the risks appropriately, there shouldn't be much impact on markets in the short term," he said.
MSCI's benchmark for global equity markets rose 0.12% to 672.95. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.26%, the Nasdaq Composite added 1.54% and the S&P 500 gained 0.36%, failing to top the 4,000 mark.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside of Japan fell 0.4%, marking its first monthly loss in five months.
China's blue-chip index sank 0.9% and Japan's Nikkei slid 0.9% as investors sold financial shares amid growing uncertainty over the fallout from the margin calls that brought down Archegos Capital.
Currencies were lower against the dollar. The greenback hit a one-year high of 110.48 against the yen as investors bet fiscal stimulus and aggressive vaccinations would boost the U.S. recovery. [FRX/]
The dollar was on track for a third monthly rise against the yen and its biggest since the end of 2016. The dollar index, tracking it against six major currencies, rose as far as 93.439, the highest in almost five months, before trimming gains.
The index was last down 0.015%, with the euro up 0.1% to $1.1726. The Japanese yen weakened 0.33% versus the greenback at 110.74 per dollar.
In commodities, Brent crude futures slid 60 cents to settle at $63.54 a barrel, while U.S. crude futures settled down $1.39 at $59.16 a barrel.
U.S. gold futures rose 1.8% to settle at $1,715.60 an ounce.
