Asian stocks were mixed Tuesday after stocks advanced on Wall Street and yields jumped in the U.S. bond market as election-related issues swayed markets worldwide.
U.S. futures fell and oil prices rose. The Japanese yen fell to near a fresh 38-year low, reaching 161.67 yen to the dollar early Tuesday.
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Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 added 1.1% to 40,074.69, as the weaker yen spurred buying of export-oriented shares.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.4% to 7,718.20. South Korea’s Kospi dropped 0.8% to 2,781.92 despite data from Statistics Korea showing the country’s consumer inflation slowed to an 11-month low in June.
Hong Kong's market was higher after a holiday break on Monday. The Hang Seng climbed 0.3% to 17,775.84 and the Shanghai Composite index edged up 0.1% to 2,995.78.
Elsewhere, Taiwan’s Taiex gained 0.6%, while the SET in Bangkok slipped 0.4%.
On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 0.3% to 5,475.09. The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 0.1% to 39,169.52, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.8% to 17,879.30.
Some of the world’s strongest action was across the Atlantic, where the CAC 40 index in Paris jumped as much as 2.8% before settling to a gain of 1.1%. Results from France suggested a far-right political party may not win a decisive majority in the country’s legislative elections. That bolstered hopes for potential gridlock in the French government, which would prevent a worst-case scenario where a far-right with a clear majority could push policies that would greatly increase the French government’s debt.
This is a big year for elections worldwide, with voters heading to the polls in the United Kingdom later this week and soon elsewhere. In the United States, pollsters are measuring the fallout from last week’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Investors are also eyeing the potential impact from a Supreme Court ruling Monday that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, likely extending the delay in a criminal case against Donald Trump to after the November election.
Trump Media & Technology Group, whose stock has been rising and falling with Trump’s White House chances, climbed 1% to $33.08. Shares of the company behind Trump’s Truth Social platform, though, are still well below their perch of roughly $70 reached earlier this year.
Treasury yields jumped, as they did Friday immediately following the Biden-Trump debate. Increased prospects for a Republican sweep in November sent traders back to moves from 2016, according to strategists at Morgan Stanley. Besides pushing rates higher, traders also piled into stocks of energy and financial companies.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.46% from 4.39% late Friday and from 4.29% late Thursday. It’s a reversal of the general trend since the spring, when the 10-year Treasury yield had topped 4.70% in late April.
Yields had been largely easing on hopes inflation will slow enough to convince the Federal Reserve to cut its main interest rate later this year, down from the highest level in more than two decades. High rates have been grinding on the U.S. economy by making it more expensive to borrow money for a house, car or anything else.
Hopes for rate cuts held after a report on Monday showed U.S. manufacturing weakened last month by more than economists expected. Perhaps even more importantly for Wall Street, the report from the Institute for Supply Management also said price increases are decelerating. Taken together, the data could offer more of the evidence that the Federal Reserve wants to see of lessening pressure on inflation before it will cut rates.
This week’s economic highlight will likely arrive Friday, when the U.S. government will say how many workers employers hired during June. Economists predict overall hiring slowed to 190,000 from May’s 272,000. That would get the number closer to what Bank of America calls the “Goldilocks” figure of roughly 150,000, give or take 25,000.
At that level, the U.S. economy could continue to grow and avoid a recession without being so strong that it puts too much upward pressure on inflation.
In other dealings, benchmark U.S. crude rose 15 cents to $83.53 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, added 23 cents to $86.83 per barrel.
The euro cost $1.0729, down from $1.0738.