Stocks, oil sell off as dollar rallies on Fed views

Lingering concern over Greece adds to bearish tone, hits stock markets • China CPI lands above forecast but producer prices still falling

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The US dollar rallied across the board on Tuesday as the prospect of the first rise in US interest rates in almost a decade stoked global volatility, hitting stocks and commodities. A resetting of expectations on the likely timing of the Federal Reserve interest rate hike in nearly a decade was the main driver for Tuesday’s selling in equities, analysts said. The benchmark S&P 500 stock index fell to a one-month low, with concerns over Greece adding to the bearish mood. Technical negotiations intended to prevent Greece going bankrupt and potentially being forced to abandon the euro bloc will start in Brussels on Wednesday. US crude futures fell near $49 per barrel and Brent dropped more than 3 percent below $57, while copper lost almost 2%, weighed also by a continuing slide in China’s producer prices. China is a major consumer of the metal. A Reuters poll after an unexpectedly strong February US jobs report Friday showed many of Wall Street’s top firms were convinced the Fed will raise rates in June. There’s “continuing concern over interest rates. It is a continuation of the pullback we saw last Friday,” Katrina Lamb, head of investment strategy and research at MV Financial in Bethesda, Maryland, said of the selloff in equities. She said the prospect of sustained dollar strength is taking a toll on the outlook for US corporate earnings, further weighing on stocks. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 234.56 points, or 1.3%, to 17,761.16, the S&P 500 lost 24.72 points, or 1.19%, to 2,054.71 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 60.85 points, or 1.23%, to 4,881.58. The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares closed down 1% and Nikkei futures were down 1.6% after an overnight drop of 0.7% in Tokyo stocks. An MSCI gauge of stocks across the globe fell 1.4%, the most for any session in more than two months. European stocks fell sharply despite the European Central Bank’s new bond-buying campaign continuing to push down the euro and the bloc’s already record-low borrowing costs. The ECB’s program helped push the US dollar higher, as did speculation the Fed will start lifting rates from mid-year. The euro was last down 1.2% at $1.0722 after hitting as low as $1.0696. “We’re seeing a generally hawkish tone out of the Fed,” said Chris Gaffney, president of EverBank World Markets in St. Louis. “There is a real desire from the Fed to just start the process, to get rates off zero,” he said. The prospect of rising US yields threatened to draw funds away from emerging markets. The Mexican peso hit a record low of 15.6218 against the dollar.

Oil slips, yields fall A further drop in producer prices in China overshadowed data that showed consumer prices there rose 1.4% in February year on year. Much of the increase, however, was due to seasonal volatility in food prices. Commodities continued to struggle with the strength of the dollar, in which most are priced. Gold hit a three-month low near $1,155 an ounce while copper futures shed 1.9%. Brent crude fell 3.2% to a near 1-month low of $56.67 a barrel, while US crude dropped 2.8% to $48.61. US Treasury debt yields were pulled lower by Europe’s massive bond-buying program and gathering expectations the Fed will soon shift away from near-zero interest rates. “We don’t think the Fed has made up its mind yet,” said Kristina Hooper, head of portfolio strategies at Allianz Global Investors in New York, which manages $499 billion. “We worried for a long time that the market was too lackadaisical, so in a lot of ways this jobs report is a good thing in that it’s aligning expectations with what we think the Fed is likely to do.” Benchmark 10-year US Treasury notes were last up 17/32 in price to yield 2.135%, compared with 2.195% late Monday.