Emerging market stocks at highest levels since 2008

Stocks in emerging markets are at their highest levels since 2008. Bloomberg reports:

Emerging-market stocks rose, driving the benchmark index to the highest level since July 2008, and currencies gained on speculation the U.S. Federal Reserve will ease monetary policy further.

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index added 0.4 percent to 1,047.84 at 11:29 a.m. New York time, heading to the highest since July 23, 2008. Brazil’s Bovespa stock index rose, led by Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica SA, the world’s fourth-largest aircraft maker. The Czech koruna, Polish zloty and Hungarian forint gained at least 1 percent versus the dollar. The rand appreciated 0.3 percent after South Africa’s current-account gap fell to a six-year low.

The economic data from advanced economies on Wednesday were mixed.

Japan reported relatively positive data. The all industry activity index rose 1.0 percent in July. Land price declines slowed in June for the first time since 2007.

Meanwhile, house price declines slowed in the US in July. Bloomberg reports:

U.S. home prices dropped 3.3 percent in July from a year earlier, the eighth consecutive decline, as foreclosed properties flooded the market.

Prices fell 0.5 percent from June, the Federal Housing Finance Agency in Washington said in a report today. Economists had projected prices to fall 0.2 percent from the previous month, based on the average of 15 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. The agency revised the previously reported May-to-June decline to 1.2 percent from 0.3 percent.

Wednesday also saw the euro area report that industrial orders fell in July. Bloomberg reports:

European industrial orders declined more than economists forecast in July, led by a drop in capital goods such as factory machinery.

Orders in the 16-nation euro area decreased 2.4 percent from June, when they rose 2.4 percent, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. Economists had forecast orders to drop 1.4 percent in July, the median of 17 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey showed. From a year earlier, July industrial orders jumped 11 percent after rising 23 percent in June.