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U.S. stocks closed lower on Wednesday as crude prices tumbled and investors weighed cautious U.S. Federal Reserve commentary and ongoing geopolitical strife against mixed quarterly earnings. Benchmark U.S. Treasury yields and the dollar eased back from multi-month highs, while gold backed down from its all-time high.   All three major U.S. stock indexes ended the session in the red, with the tech shares dragging the Nasdaq down 1.15%. “April has been a little disappointing for investors, but remember stocks have gained the past five months, some kind of pause or break would be perfectly normal, and we very well could be seeing that right now,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group in Omaha, Nebraska. U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell declined to provide guidance on Tuesday regarding the timing and extent of expected interest rate cuts, but said policy needs to be restrictive for longer, dimming hopes for rate cuts this year. “The realization that Powell is pushing back on when the interest rate cuts might start has added to the overall confusion, solidifying the assumption that…

By Stella Qiu SYDNEY (Reuters) –Asian shares steadied from a recent sell-off on Wednesday although investors remain wary after the world’s most powerful central banker had a change of heart on U.S. rate cuts this year, pushing Treasury yields to new five-month highs. Europe is set for a subdued open, with EUROSTOXX 50 futures flat on the day. U.S. stock futures slipped 0.1% after Wall Street finished the day lower. The dollar’s surprising resilience this year is causing discomfort in Asia’s currency markets. The beleaguered yen is plumbing fresh 34-year lows on an almost daily basis, the Chinese yuan is pinned near five-month troughs and Vietnam’s dong is at record lows. The New Zealand dollar gained 0.4% to $0.5902 after first-quarter inflation data showed domestically driven price pressures were surprisingly strong, adding to signs that the last mile to get inflation back to target could be bumpy. On Wednesday, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.1%, after plunging more than 4% in the past three sessions. Japan’s Nikkei, however, dropped 0.8% to the lowest in two months….

PricewaterhouseCoopers released the “Report on the Luxury Goods Market in Mainland China and Hong Kong”, predicting that by 2030, China will replace the United States as the world’s largest personal luxury goods market with a market size of US$148 billion. PwC pointed out that China’s personal luxury goods market will be driven by large-scale intergenerational transfer of wealth, continued development of new consumer groups, vigorous development of experiential consumption and luxury lifestyle, high growth potential in Hainan, and further integration of online services with online services. Further expansion will be driven by factors such as channel improvement and other factors. In the next 30 years, China will have 92 trillion yuan of wealth passed down to the second generation of high-net-worth individuals. In terms of the Hong Kong market, PwC predicts that the Hong Kong personal luxury goods market will grow at an average compound annual growth rate of 4.5% from 2023 to 2030, reaching HK$125.8 billion in 2030. Among them, the three major categories of luxury accessories with the largest growth are leather products, Jewelry and watches. Zheng Huanran,…

JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategists say don’t expect an upbeat corporate earnings season to drive stocks higher because much of the optimism has already been priced in after this year’s record gains. A research team led by Mislav Matejka wrote in a report that profit expectations for the first quarter have been lowered during the reporting period, which lowers the threshold for U.S. companies to exceed expectations. Strategists said that after excluding technology giants, S&P 500 companies’ profits are expected to decline across the board. At the same time, investor positions look “very stretched,” Matejka said, with major stock indexes hitting record highs on optimism about economic growth and interest rate cuts. He said: “The stock market has performed well post-earnings, suggesting investors are more optimistic than the pessimistic earnings forecasts conveyed by sell-side analysts. We need to see significant earnings acceleration to justify current stock valuations “It’s reasonable and we’re concerned that this may not happen.” Matejka said that so far, half of U.S. companies have performed below market expectations on the day of earnings reports. Despite a 10%…

The exchange rate of the yen against the U.S. dollar in the Tokyo foreign exchange market fell to more than 153.8 yen per U.S. dollar on the 15th, a record low in nearly 34 years. Kyodo News reported that interest rate differentials between Japan and the United States prompted investors to sell Japanese yen and buy U.S. dollars. In addition, the latest developments in the situation in the Middle East have also enhanced the appeal of the U.S. dollar as a “safe haven asset.” The consular building of the Iranian Embassy in Syria was attacked by a missile on April 1, killing at least 13 people. Iran and Syria said the attack was carried out by Israel. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement in the early morning of the 14th, announcing that it had launched dozens of missiles and drones at Israeli targets. An Israeli military spokesman said that more than 300 drones and missiles were fired at Israel, and “99%” of them were intercepted. As of 3 pm on the 15th, the Japanese yen exchange rate was…

U.S. retail sales in March rose higher than economists expected, further weakening investor confidence in the Federal Reserve starting to cut interest rates this year. Most U.S. Treasury bond yields climbed to new highs since the beginning of the year, with the 2-year Treasury bond yield approaching 5%. The 10-year Treasury yield rose 10 basis points to 4.62%, the highest level since November 14 last year. Expectations for monetary policy have shifted toward the Federal Reserve starting to cut interest rates later, with officials saying rate cuts would require a higher degree of confidence that inflation is continuing to rise toward its 2% target. Traders no longer fully expect a rate cut before November, whereas at the start of the year markets were fully pricing in rate cuts starting in March.

The convergence of interest rate cut expectations is rewriting the narrative of global capital markets. Recently, due to the impact of U.S. economic fundamentals such as inflation and employment that exceeded expectations, market expectations for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates within the year have declined. The “anchor of global asset pricing” has made waves again. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield recently broke through the 4.5% mark and remains above this point. Some market participants are worried that the “nightmare” of 10-year U.S. bond yields pointing to 5% may strike again. Analysts believe that the current asset prices are more reflected in the correction of front-running transactions in anticipation of interest rate cuts. Looking ahead, interest rate cut expectations may continue to swing driven by data and geopolitics, affecting the trend of U.S. bond yields. Multi-maturity U.S. Treasury yields rise The rapid rise in U.S. bond yields has once again attracted market attention. On April 10, local time, as the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) in March exceeded expectations across the board, the market was worried about the prospect…

CITIC Securities believes that driven by factors such as macroeconomic resilience, share improvement, cost reduction and efficiency improvement, the overall performance of the US Internet sector in the first quarter is expected to exceed expectations. In terms of sectors, online advertising and e-commerce are the sub-sectors with the highest certainty. Benefiting from the macroeconomics and the continuous upgrade of AI recommendation systems, revenue and profit growth are expected to further accelerate. In the streaming media industry, driven by factors such as the relatively slow release of content, membership advertising, and crackdowns on shared accounts, leading companies are expected to benefit. In the local life sector, the trend of major companies reducing losses continues and demand remains stable. In addition, the improvement in cash flow of major Internet companies also brings potential opportunities for shareholder return growth. In terms of valuation, although expectations for interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve continue to fluctuate, the valuations of major Internet companies have not deviated significantly from the valuation center of the past five years, and the overall price/performance ratio remains outstanding.

Iran’s attack on Israel over the weekend represents the possibility of a wider conflict in the Middle East and has made global markets more worried about uncontrollable risks. Capital Economics said that heightened tensions in the Middle East after Iran attacked Israel may give the Federal Reserve more reason to slow down the pace of raising interest rates, as soaring oil prices will disrupt the Fed’s battle with central banks. Neil Shearing, chief economist at Capital Economics, said in a report on Sunday that the main risk facing the world is whether Iran and Israel will escalate their conflict into a broader regional conflict, and how the energy market will react. He said that rising oil prices will make inflation targets in advanced economies more complex, but only when energy prices become a key driver of core inflation rates will they likely have a substantial impact on central bank decision-making. According to the White House, it is working hard to prevent the situation from expanding further. Biden is said to have communicated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the…

Recently, the sharp rise in international gold prices has attracted the attention of investors from almost all over the world. Behind the frenzied buying in the gold market, another safe-haven asset, U.S. Treasury bonds, presents a completely different scene of depression. A series of weak performance at U.S. Treasury auctions has stoked investor concerns that the market will struggle to absorb the massive issuance of Treasury debt. In the past week, after weak demand for the US$39 billion 10-year Treasury bond auction, the bond market sell-off triggered by higher-than-expected U.S. CPI in March intensified. Investors also showed little interest in the three-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury auctions. Behind the growing caution among bond market investors is the growing belief that U.S. inflation is not yet fully under control and that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates at multi-decade highs in the coming months or even years. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note, known as the “anchor of global asset pricing” and the benchmark for pricing borrowing rates from mortgages to corporate loans, closed at around 4.5% last…