2023-11-29 12:53:58
(Central News Agency, Hong Kong, November 29, 2023, comprehensive foreign news report) U.S. stocks performed sluggishly once more, and the market focused on the inflation indicator that will be released this week and is preferred by the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed). Asian stocks have divergent trends.
Agence France-Presse reported that indicators released in recent weeks indicate that the U.S. job market is gradually weakening and the economy is slowing, but not fast enough to make people too worried regarding an economic recession.
That has encouraged investors to move back into risk assets, but the latest gains have been capped by profit-taking ahead of the “Christmas rally” that many are hoping for.
According to Bloomberg, data shows that investors are currently betting that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in June next year, and they believe that the probability of a rate cut in May is 80%.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, said a rate cut might come as soon as the first quarter.
Christopher Waller, the hawkish Fed governor, expressed optimism in his speech yesterday. “I am increasingly confident that policy is ready to slow economic growth and get inflation back to 2 percent,” he said of the Fed’s goals at the American Enterprise Institute.
Stocks are struggling ahead of this week’s key data release, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge.
Hong Kong led the decline, with shares in Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, Wellington and Jakarta also lower amid a heavy sell-off in shares of prominent technology companies. Sydney, Singapore and Taipei stock markets closed higher.
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