Friday 15 August 2014

Markets rise as eurozone economy stalls

Markets rose again on Thursday, the MSCI All-Country World Index and the S&P 500 each adding 0.4 percent.

European stocks also rose on Thursday. The STOXX Europe 600 gained 0.3 percent despite a report on Thursday showing that the eurozone economy stalled in the second quarter.

Germany's economy shrank 0.2 percent while France's stagnated.

Earlier, a report showed that Japanese core machinery orders rose 8.8 percent in June. While positive, this was just a partial recovery of the record 19.5 percent fall in May.

For the April-June quarter as a whole, core machinery orders fell 10.4 percent. Companies surveyed by the Cabinet Office forecast that core orders would rise 2.9 percent in July-September.

Elsewhere in Asia, the Bank of Korea cut its benchmark overnight inter-bank loan rate by 25 basis points to 2.25 per cent on Thursday. It was the first rate cut since May 2013 and comes after Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan warned last month that the national economy stood at a crossroads between "making a leap forward and falling into a recession".

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