US stocks continued their record-breaking streak on Monday. The S&P 500 rose 1.0 percent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.7 percent to close at record highs.
With the STOXX Europe 600 also rising 0.7 percent and the Shanghai Composite Index jumping 2.1 percent, the MSCI All-Country World Index rose 0.7 percent to the highest level since 2007.
Chinese stocks rose after a report at the end of last week that the government will relax foreign-investment limits in listed companies, increase quotas for capital flow and develop commodities trading tools.
However, a report on Monday showed that Chinese bank lending shrank in April. New local-currency loans extended by domestic banks was 774.7 billion yuan in April, down 17.6 billion yuan from the same month a year earlier and also sharply down from 1.05 trillion yuan in March. Total social financing fell to 1.55 trillion yuan last month from 2.07 trillion yuan in March.
Elsewhere in Asia on Monday, Japan reported that its current account surplus shrank 90.9 percent to 116.4 billion yen in March from a year earlier. That left its annual current account surplus for the fiscal year 2013 at 789.9 billion yen, its lowest on record.
Japan also reported on Monday that the sentiment index on current conditions based on the economy watchers survey plunged 16.3 points to 41.6 in April. Encouragingly, however, the outlook index jumped 15.6 points to 50.3 in April, suggesting that the impact of the sales tax hike in April on household spending and sentiment will fade.
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