Friday 14 August 2020

Markets slip despite fall in US jobless claims

Markets were mostly lower on Thursday.

The S&P 500 fell 0.2 percent and the STOXX Europe 600 fell 0.6 percent.

Earlier in Asia, the Nikkei 225 jumped 1.8 percent but the Shanghai Composite was flat.

Initial US jobless claims fell to 963,000 last week from 1.19 million the previous week, the second consecutive decline.

“The equity market, in the U.S. and elsewhere is taking comfort from the fact that economic data show resilience to spikes in virus infections. This has been true for the U.S. economy for a while, and we can see it in Asia too,” said Kit Juckes, global macro strategist at Société Générale.

UBS economists, though, think that the economic recovery has slowed. The economy faces a “prolonged dislocation in the labor market”, with the unemployment rate probably still around 10 percent at the end of this year.

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