Equities
Global markets ticked higher as investors awaited U.S. economic data and comments from Federal Reserve officials later in the day for more clarity on the central bank’s roadmap for interest rate cuts.
Wall Street indexes opened mixed following soft retail sales data for May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.15 per cent to 38,834.62, the S&P 500 advanced 0.19 per cent to 5,483.85, and the Nasdaq Composite slid 0.04 per cent to 17,849.61 at the bell.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index gained 0.27 per cent at the open to 21,643.28.
“The weaker-than-expected [retail sales] data’s telling me that consumers are still having a difficult time and that the economy is still moving forward, but at a slower pace,” said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth Management.
“The Fed has to start thinking about cutting interest rates, perhaps sooner than the end of the year.”
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was 0.71 per cent higher in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 advanced 0.67 per cent, Germany’s DAX added 0.35 per cent and France’s CAC 40 gained 0.75 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 1 per cent higher at 38,482.11, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.1 per cent to 17,915.55.
Commodities
Oil prices were largely stable as traders awaited signs of a hoped-for summer demand boost to prop up prices even as strong supply threatens to blunt gains.
Brent crude futures were up 0.43 per cent to US$84.64 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 0.5 per cent to US$80.73 a barrel. Both benchmarks gained about 2 per cent yesterday, closing at their highest levels since April.
“The oil market shifted its focus back to fundamentals, which have been soft for some time,” said BoFA commodity and derivatives strategist Francisco Blanch in a note, adding that global crude oil inventories and refined product storage in the United States and Singapore, among other places, was higher.
In other commodities, spot gold dipped 0.5 per cent to US$2,308.09 an ounce.
Currencies and bonds
The Canadian dollar reversed course and strengthened against its U.S. counterpart in morning trading.
The day range on the loonie was 72.68 US cents to 72.94 US cents in the premarket period. The Canadian dollar was down about 0.46 per cent against the greenback over the past month.
The U.S. dollar index, which weighs the greenback against a group of currencies, was down 0.04 per cent to 105.28.
The euro inched higher to US$1.075. The British pound gained 0.06 per cent to US$1.2712.
In bonds, the yield on the U.S. 10-year note slid 0.032 per cent to 4.254 per cent.
Economic news
Canada’s CPI: Updated Basket Weights
U.S. retail sales for May, which increased 0.1 per cent from April. The Street had projected a 0.3-per-cent rise.
(9:15 a.m. ET) U.S. industrial production for May. Consensus is a rise of 0.4 per cent from April with capacity utilization increasing 0.2 per cent to 78.6 per cent.
(10 a.m. ET) U.S. business inventories for April. The consensus estimate is a rise of 0.3 per cent from March.
With Reuters and The Canadian Press