In This Article:
(Updates with Europe open)
By Naomi Rovnick and Kevin Buckland
LONDON, TOKYO June 9 (Reuters) -
Global equities were set for a small weekly gain on Friday following a Wall Street rally overnight, as rising bets the Federal Reserve will skip a rate increase next week overshadowed worries about U.S. markets being drained of cash.
MSCI's broad index of global shares edged 0.2% higher, on track for a weekly rise of 0.6%.
Europe's Stoxx 600 equity gauge was flat, following a 2% jump in Japan's Nikkei, which rebounded strongly after its plunge from a 33-year high in the previous session.
Traders now lay 73% odds on the Fed keeping rates steady on June 14, in a range of 5%-5.25%, pausing its most aggressive hiking cycle since the 1980s.
Bets for a pause were supported by data overnight showing the number of Americans filing new jobless claims surged to a more than 1 1/2-year high, indicating a loosening labour market that could further quell inflation.
Investors also hope the Fed will pause its rate rise campaign as a quirk of the U.S. debt ceiling negotiations has posed a potential a threat to market liquidity.
The U.S. government is expected to rush to sell short term debt to replenish its Treasury General Account, potentially at yields so high that banks raise deposit rates to compete for funding, reducing interest in riskier assets like equities.
"We're all worried about liquidity," said Ben Jones, director of macro research at Invesco. The Fed, he added, "still wants to tighten," policy and therefore may allow the TGA rebuild to drain liquidity from markets without stepping in to provide other support tools.
This fear was not dominating trading on Friday, however.
On Wall Street overnight, gains were led by the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which surged 1.27%.
The broader S&P 500 rose 0.62%. Its gains put the benchmark index up 20% from its Oct. 12 closing low and heralded the start of a new bull market, at least by the definition of some market participants.
On Friday, e-mini U.S. equity futures pointed to a steady start for each of the indices.
Fed Chair Jerome) said on May 19 it was still unclear if U.S. interest rates will need to rise further, and the risks of overtightening or undertightening had become more balanced.
YIELDS UP
Two-year Treasury yields, which are extremely sensitive to monetary policy expectations, rose about 3.5 basis points (bps) to around 4.55%. The 10-year yield edged up to 3.749% after tumbling 7 bps overnight.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the currency against a basket of six major peers, rebounded 0.2% to 103.52.