Saturday 26 April 2014

US stocks fall amid mixed economic data

US stocks fell on Friday. The S&P 500 lost 0.8 percent to end the week slightly down by 0.1 percent.

Stocks were not helped by mixed data from the US on Friday.

The US services sector slowed in April. Markit's flash reading of its US services PMI came in at 54.2 this month, down from 55.3 in March.

The fall in the services index pushed the composite index down to 54.9 in April from 55.7 in March.

However, US consumer confidence improved in April. The final reading of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index this month came in at 84.1, up from 80.0 in March.

There were also mixed data from the UK on Friday.

Retail sales rose in March, but by just 0.1 percent. It was slower than February's 1.3 percent rise but was enough to push sales for the first three months of 2014 up 0.8 percent compared to a 0.6 percent rise in the fourth quarter of 2013.

A report from the British Bankers' Association on Friday showed that the number of mortgages approved fell in March for a second consecutive month to its lowest level since November but banks' lending for overdrafts and personal loans rose on an annual basis for the first time since January 2009.

Earlier on Friday, Japan reported that consumer prices excluding fresh food rose 1.3 percent in March from the previous year. Higher energy bills again drove much of the increase in prices, with electricity costs rising 10.0 percent and petrol prices rising 2.1 percent.

Data for the Tokyo metropolitan area showed that consumer inflation excluding fresh food hit an estimated 2.7 percent in April in the capital, the highest since 1992. However, stripping out the effects of a recent sales tax change, underlying inflation in Tokyo was 1.0 percent, unchanged from March.

Another report from Japan on Friday showed that Japan's all industry activity index fell 1.1 percent in February, giving up some of its 1.7 percent gain in January.

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