· Two U.S. stock indexes may have closed at record highs this week, but one investor said the markets could be driven even higher on strong earnings.
“We were running into a market that had gotten so much fear at the end of last year, that earnings estimates came very far down, perhaps too far down,” Timothy Lesko, partner at Granite Investment Advisors, said on Wednesday.
“Maybe there’s 10, 15% left” in the market’s potential rise, Lesko projected, pointing to a “very, very pleasant” interest rate environment.
· European shares fell on Thursday, weighed down by energy stocks and Nokia shares while investors parsed through a mixed bag of earnings in the region amid lingering concerns for the eurozone economy.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index fell 0.4 percent by 0730 GMT after the benchmark index’s eight session rally stalled on Wednesday.
· Asian shares slipped to three-week lows on Thursday as a surprise deterioration in German and South Korean economic data rekindled fears of slowing global growth, while oil prices pulled back slightly after a sharp run-up earlier in the week.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.5 percent, while Japan’s Nikkei average closed up 0.5 percent.
Investors await the next batch of quarterly earnings and U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) data for the January-March quarter, due on Friday, for signs on whether the recent stock rally can continue.
· Japan’s Nikkei rose to 4-1/2-month high on Thursday as a bevy of corporate earnings turned out to be less bad than some investors had feared and selling ahead of the long holiday eased.
Some market players said sentiment was supported after the Bank of Japan said it would consider a scheme to lend some of its massive ETFs (exchange traded funds) holdings and pledged to keep current low rates at least until early 2020.
The Nikkei share average rose 0.48 percent to 22,307.58, its highest close since early December. The Topix rose 0.51 percent to 1,620.28.
· Stocks in China tumbled on Thursday amid worries that Beijing could pull back on stimulus measures following recent better-than-expected economic data.
The Shanghai composite fell 2.43% to close at 3,123.83 and the Shenzhen component dropped about 3.21% to finish at around 9,907.62. The Shenzhen composite also plunged 3.411% to close at 1,688.25.
Reference: Reuters, CNBC
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