- Asian Stocks Climb as Worry Eases, Dollar Steadies
The selloff in riskier assets eased after U.S. stocks staged a recovery, with the dollar putting the brakes on losses and most Asian equity markets climbing.
Japan’s Topix and Australia’s main index led equity gains from Singapore to South Korea. The yen was little changed after earlier declines. Friday’s decision to cancel voting on the U.S. health-care bill sent global stocks briefly into a tailspin on Monday as investors assessed the U.S. administration’s ability to enact reform. The dollar steadied after almost erasing the rally spurred by Donald Trump’s election victory, the S&P 500 Index pared declines and the VIX Index fell on Monday.
Investors are weighing the chance of slower inflation necessitating less need for quicker interest-rate increases from the Federal Reserve. Fed Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said two hikes may be the right amount of tightening for the U.S. economy this year, given uncertainty surrounding the outlook for inflation and government spending.
“On balance the underpinnings are strong enough that we want to stay long” equities, Ted Weisberg, president at Seaport Securities, a brokerage in New York, told Bloomberg TV. “We are viewing any kind of selloff as a buying opportunity.”
Here are this week’s key events:
- U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May will on Wednesday formally trigger the start of two years of Brexit negotiations with a letter announcing Britain’s planned withdrawal from the European Union.
- Proposals to design and build Trump’s promised 2,000-mile border wall between the U.S. and Mexico are due March 29.
- Hungary, Mexico, South Africa and Thailand are among countries setting interest rates.
- Samsung Electronics Co. will introduce its Galaxy S8 smartphone, the company’s first new mobile phone since the debacle with the Note 7 battery fires that led to its recall.
