Asian shares marked time on Thursday, with China nudging lower, while the U.S. dollar held below an 11-week high as investors reassessed U.S. Federal Reserve statements on inflation and looked to upcoming data for direction.
In early European trades, the pan-region Euro Stoxx 50 futures were up 0.2%, German DAX futures were up 0.1% while FTSE futures were flat. U.S. stock futures, the S&P 500 e-minis, edged up 0.3%.MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was flat at 694.32 points, off a one-month trough of 685.12 touched earlier this week.
Japan’s Nikkei was unchanged too at while Chinese shares barely moved with the blue-chip CSI300 index up 0.1%. Australian shares finished 0.5% lower.On Wall Street, the Nasdaq closed at a record high on Wednesday, while other major U.S. indexes ended lower alongside European stocks.
The market has whipsawed over the last week, feeling the after-effects of a surprise projection for rate increases as soon as 2023 by the U.S. Federal Reserve which knocked stocks, boosted the dollar and led to the flattening of the U.S. bond yield curve.
