"June 8 (Bloomberg) -- Asian stocks fell, paring their first weekly advance since April, the euro weakened and oil headed for the longest losing streak in 13 years as comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke overshadowed China’s first interest-rate cut since 2008. U.S. Treasuries and the yen rallied amid demand for refuge assets.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index sank 1 percent at 12:37 p.m. in Tokyo, trimming its weekly gain to 0.5 percent. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average slid 1.6 percent. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures lost 0.4 percent and the euro slid 0.3 percent. Oil tumbled 2.1 percent in New York, poised to complete a sixth week of declines. The S&P GSCI gauge of commodities fell 1.3 percent.
Global stocks rallied this week as speculation mounted that policy makers would act to spur growth. Bernanke said the Fed will need to assess conditions before deciding if more measures are required to stoke an economy threatened by Europe’s debt crisis and U.S. budget cuts. China’s reduction in lending and deposit rates comes a day before the nation is due to report inflation, investment and output figures. Data due today may show German exports fell in April.
“The key issue really is around European sovereign debt and having some permanent resolution,” said Donald Williams, chief investment officer at Platypus Asset Management Ltd. that manages about $1 billion. “Even though China’s rate cut was unexpected, people are selling because it confirms in their minds that the growth outlook is problematic.”
Bernanke Testimony
In his prepared comments, the Fed chairman didn’t call for consideration of additional stimulus, a contrast with a speech earlier this week in which Vice Chairman Janet Yellen said the economy “remains vulnerable to setbacks” and may warrant more accommodation.
Sony Corp., Japan’s No. 1 exporter of consumer electronics, slid 4.1 percent as the yen climbed while South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co. lost 0.9 percent. BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s largest mining company, gained 1.3 percent in Sydney. Anhui Conch Cement Co. slumped 2.7 percent in Hong Kong after saying first-half profit may drop “considerably.”
Today’s losses come after the MSCI Asia Pacific Index climbed 1.6 percent this week through yesterday. The gauge plunged 14 percent from a six-month high in February through last week as U.S. economic data trailed estimates and concern grew about Greece’s future in the euro and Spain’s deteriorating national finances.
Central Bank Rates
Policy makers are being pressed into action to shore up a global economy that is suffering its steepest slowdown since the recession ended in 2009.
The People’s Bank of China said overnight it will lower its benchmark lending and deposit rates from today. The decision follows an Australian interest-rate cut on June 5. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi left the door open at a June 6 press conference to a rate cut, while highlighting the limitations of the ECB’s tools in countering the region’s financial turmoil.
The Bank of Korea held off from altering borrowing costs for a 12th-straight month today, as predicted by all 15 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
The global economy will grow 1.7 percent this quarter and 2 percent next, after expanding at an annual pace of 2.5 percent in the final quarter of 2011, economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York said in a June 1 report. The result is “an extended soft patch as weak as anything experienced in the past two decades outside the Great Recession,” they wrote.
China, Germany
Industrial output in China, the world’s biggest producer of steel and cement, probably rose 9.8 percent last month from a year earlier, close to the slowest pace in three years, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists before the report due tomorrow.
German exports, adjusted for work days and seasonal changes, probably decreased 0.7 percent in April from March, when they rose a revised 0.8 percent, according to a Bloomberg survey.
The euro dropped 0.3 percent to $1.2526. The Dollar Index, which IntercontinentalExchange Inc. uses to track the greenback against the currencies of six major U.S. trading partners, rose 0.4 percent to 82.406. The yen gained 0.5 percent to 99.54 per euro and added 0.2 percent to 79.44 per dollar.
U.S. Treasuries rose, with the 10-year yield sliding two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 1.62 percent. Japan’s 10-year rate declined 2 1/2 basis points to 0.855 percent.
Japan’s gross domestic product grew an annualized 4.7 percent in the three months ended March 31, the Cabinet Office said today, compared with a preliminary estimate for a 4.1 percent expansion. The median forecast of 18 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for 4.5 percent growth.
OPEC Meeting
Copper fell 1.7 percent, zinc tumbled 1.2 percent and nickel slid 1.5 percent. Oil fell to $83.06. Global crude supply is sufficient, Youcef Yousfi, Algeria’s energy minister, said yesterday before the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which supplies about 40 percent of the world’s crude, meets next week in Vienna to review output targets.
The Markit iTraxx Japan index increased 4 basis points to 191 basis points, Citigroup Inc. prices show. The benchmark is headed for the biggest one-day gain since June 1, according to data provider CMA. The Markit iTraxx Asia index of 40 investment-grade borrowers outside Japan climbed 2 basis points to 194.5 basis points, Standard Chartered Plc prices show.
Credit-default swap indexes are benchmarks for protecting bonds against default and traders use them to speculate on credit quality. A drop signals improving perceptions of creditworthiness, while an increase suggests the opposite.
To contact the reporters on this story: Richard Frost in Hong Kong at rfrost4@bloomberg.net ; Yoshiaki Nohara in Tokyo at ynohara1@bloomberg.net "
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Steven
Steven Morris CA (SA)
Mobie : 083 943 1858
Fax: 086 671 2498
E-Mail: steven@global.co.za
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