World stocks rose yesterday, boosted by upbeat Chinese data, while oil prices jumped as an escalation in fighting between the Iraqi government and Kurdish forces threatened supply.
Asian shares rallied to a decade high after figures showed China’s producer prices beat market expectations to rise 6.9 per cent in September from a year earlier.
Major Wall Street indexes hit fresh records at the market open on gains in financial and technology stocks ahead of a barrage of earnings reports this week.
“The market still wants to be optimistic, it wants to continue to move higher from here,” said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist at Boston Private Wealth.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside at its highest level since late 2007. Japan’s Nikkei rose 0.47 per cent.
Emerging market stocks rose 0.48 per cent.
Japan’s Nikkei climbed to a level not seen since November 1996. Australian shares extended their winning streak to a fourth straight session to rise 0.6 per cent, while South Korea’s stock index set a new record.
Upbeat data from China came before the Communist Party Congress tomorrow and third-quarter economic data on Thursday. Figures showed China’s producer prices beat market expectations to rise 6.9 per cent in September from a year earlier.
“What has helped risk appetite this morning is that the Chinese inflation data suggests the world’s second biggest economy is doing much better than people expected this time a year ago for 2017,” said Michael Hewson, chief markets analyst at CMC Markets.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 34.9 points, or 0.15 per cent, to 22,906.62, the S&P 500 gained two points, or 0.08 per cent, to 2,555.17 and the Nasdaq Composite added 13.27 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 6,619.08.
The pan-European FTSE-urofirst 300 index rose 0.09 per cent and MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.11 per cent.
Copper hit three-year highs, last up 3.67 per cent to $7,134.50 a tonne. Prices of iron ore and coke, key ingredients in steel-making, jumped with Dalian iron ore futures.
Oil prices were also driven higher as Iraqi forces entered the oil city of Kirkuk, taking territory from Kurdish fighters and briefly cutting some output from OPEC’s second-biggest producer.
“The escalation in Northern Iraq is the main driver,” Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch told the Reuters Global Oil Forum.
“Oil supply from this region is at risk.”
US crude rose 0.82 per cent to $51.87 per barrel and Brent was last at $57.86, up 1.21 per cent on the day.
Yesterday, the euro went down 0.16 per cent to $1.1803, while the dollar index rose 0.09 per cent.