Shares mixed on Iran plan
paris — US and European stock markets edged lower after a day of gains in Asia, as a decision by US President Donald Trump loomed on whether to pull out of the US nuclear deal with Iran.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 49.96 points, or 0.21 per cent, to 24,307.36. The S&P 500 lost 7.53 points, or 0.28 per cent, to 2,665.1 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 18.77 points, or 0.26 per cent, to 7,246.45.
MSCI’s gauge of global equity markets fell 0.09 per cent while the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index lost 0.02 per cent.
Germany’s DAX dropped 0.5 per cent to 12,878 and the CAC 40 in France lost 0.5 per cent to 5,502. Britain’s FTSE 100 edged 0.1 per cent higher to 7,573. The future for the S&P 500 slipped 0.3 per cent and the Dow futures lost 0.2 per cent, pointing to a downbeat start on Wall Street.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock index added 0.2 per cent to 22,508.69 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index climbed 1.4 per cent to 30,402.81. The Shanghai Composite index jumped 0.8 per cent to 3,161.50. South Korea’s Kospi gave up early gains to lose 0.5 per cent, ending at 2,449.81, while Australia’s S&P ASX 200 edged 0.1 per cent higher to 6,091.90.
Earlier, shares were higher in Singapore and Taiwan but fell 1.9 per cent in Indonesia after the government reported economic growth slowed in January-March.
Trump was due to announce on Tuesday whether he plans to carry out his threat to pull out of the landmark nuclear accord with Iran and almost surely cause its collapse. There are no signs that European allies enlisted to “fix” the deal had persuaded him to preserve the accord, whose loss would reflect a growing rift between the US and its allies in Europe.
Several companies, including Airbus, Boeing and Total, have struck business deals in Iran and could be looking for exemptions if US sanctions are imposed again.
China’s exports expanded by 21.5 per cent from a year earlier in April, bouncing back from a contraction the previous month. Imports expanded 12.9 per cent year on year in dollar terms, leaving the country’s politically sensitive monthly trade surplus with the rest of the world at $28.8 billion, a turnaround from the previous month’s $5 billion deficit.
“The widening China-US trade surplus reflects the difficulty of significantly closing the trade gap between the 2 countries in the near term, but it is unlikely to obstruct the constructive progress made recently,” Betty Wang of ANZ said in a commentary.
At 10:38am (1438 GMT), an index that tracks the greenback versus the euro, yen, sterling and six other currencies hit 93.280, its highest since December. It was last up 0.5 per cent at 93.212. — AP,