Global shares fall on doubts about easing lockdowns

London — Global shares struggled on Wednesday as mixed earnings, doubts about the easing of coronavirus lockdowns and simmering US-China tensions cast a pall over markets.

Oil prices ended an extended winning streak on oversupply risks.

MSCI’s index of global shares was trading flat. The pan-European Stoxx 600 was 0.3% higher, with losses in oil and gas shares weighing on the index. Shares in UniCredit fell about 1% after Italy’s biggest bank posted a €2.7bn loss in the first quarter amid loan writedowns in anticipation of the damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Earnings season is not great, but it’s really the issue of the virus and the end of the lockdown, and sentiment towards that will push the market,” said François Savary, chief investment officer at Swiss wealth manager Prime Partners.

“We think there’ll be a consolidation for the equity market. It won’t take us back to the lows we saw in March, but markets are waiting for a clearer outlook on how the lockdown will end.”

Germany and Spain are among economies gradually emerging from lockdowns, but the outlook for an easing of restrictions elsewhere is less certain.

Wall Street futures were positive, with E-minis for the S&P 500 up 0.6%.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares excluding Japan climbed 0.7%. Volumes were light with Japanese markets closed for a holiday. China, opening for the first time since Thursday, reversed early losses, sending the blue-chip index up 0.6%.

In a move that was seen by analysts as offering an olive branch to Washington amid the trade tensions, China’s central bank set the yuan at a broadly neutral midpoint. The exchange rate has been a contentious point in China-US ties.

“The People’s Bank of China went a long way to extinguishing one major trade war hotspot by setting the yuan reference rate on a more risk-friendly level,” said Stephen Innes, chief markets strategist at AxiCorp.

“The dollar/renminbi dropped about 200 pips on the stable fix, and a recovery in risk sentiment ensued, and there was no follow-through on US President Donald Trump’s threat to China.”

Trump has repeatedly taken aim at China as the source of the pandemic and warned that it would be held to account. On Tuesday, he urged China to be transparent about the origins of the coronavirus, which began in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

On Wall Street overnight, the S&P 500 pared earlier gains after US Federal Reserve vice-chair Richard Clarida warned that economic data would get worse before it got better.

Euro fall

In currencies, the euro resumed its fall, declining to a six-day low of $1.0816 on Wednesday. The currency was still under pressure after Germany’s top court on Tuesday ruled that the European Central Bank’s (ECB) quantitative-easing (QE) programme “partially violated” the German constitution.

The yen rose 0.2% to ¥106.35, having earlier reached ¥106.20, its strongest since March 17. The dollar index was flat at 99.810.

The ADP National Employment Report of private US payrolls on Wednesday could foretell the damage to be revealed on Friday in the US government’s measure of jobs in April. It’s expected to show nearly 22-million jobs were lost last month.

German borrowing costs rose before the country’s first syndicated bond sale in half a decade. Germany’s benchmark 10-year yields rose two basis points to -0.55%, though they remain close to Tuesday’s seven-week lows.

In commodities, US crude futures fell 22c to $24.34 a barrel after five straight sessions of gains. Brent crude dropped 25c $30.72.

The decline was prompted by a higher-than-expected rise in US inventories, refocusing investors on the risk of oversupply amid a slump in fuel demand. Analysts cautioned the rebalancing of the market would be choppy.

“We’re talking about normalisation of supply and demand’ but we’ve got a long way to go,” said Lachlan Shaw, National Australia Bank’s head of commodity strategy. “There are a lot of supply cuts that have come through. That combined with some early signs of demand lifting has meant the rate of inventory build is slowing.”

Spot gold eased 0.1% to $1,704 an ounce.

Reuters