FILE PHOTO: A screen shows Nikkei index after a ceremony marking the end of trading in 2021 at the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) in Tokyo, Japan December 30, 2021. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
January 4, 2022
By Lawrence Delevingne
BOSTON (Reuters) -Wall Street’s optimistic start to the New Year pushed some stocks, oil prices and the dollar higher, but investors dialled back risk-taking elsewhere as data showed U.S. manufacturing slowed last month and COVID-19 continued spreading.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 236.73 points, or 0.65%, to 36,821.79 — a fresh record — while the S&P 500 lost 9.58 points, or 0.2%, to 4,786.98.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 264.80 points, or 1.67%, to 15,568.00, a day after Apple Inc became the first company to hit a $3 trillion stock market value.
“While seats are filling up again on Wall Street, we think that market players will be slow to increase risk,” Scott Ladner, chief investment officer at Charlotte-based wealth management firm Horizon Investments, wrote in an email.
The Institute for Supply Management said on Tuesday that its index of U.S. factory activity fell to 58.7 last month from 61.1 in November, the lowest tally since last January. Still, supply constraints are starting to ease and a measure of prices paid for inputs by factories fell by the most in a decade.
Global equities were also up earlier on Tuesday. The Euro STOXX 600 gained 0.82% to hit a record of 494.03 points, topping its previous all-time high on Monday. Asian stocks were on the front foot following Wall Street’s record highs on its first trading day of 2022, with MSCI’s gauge of Asia Pacific stocks outside Japan up around 0.4%.
The U.S. dollar rose against the Japanese yen to hit a five-year peak as investors anticipated the Omicron variant would not derail the global economy or delay the Federal Reserve’s expected rate hikes.
The dollar index edged up 0.074%, while the euro slipped 0.07% to $1.1286.
U.S. Treasury yields were also up as bond investors geared up for rate hikes from the Fed by mid-year to curb stubbornly high inflation.
Benchmark 10-year yields advanced to a six-week high of 1.6823%
Oil prices rose again on Tuesday as OPEC+ agreed to stick to its planned increase in oil output for February, sources from the group told Reuters, because it expects the Omicron variant to have a short-lived impact on demand.
U.S. crude was last 0.8% higher at $76.69 per barrel and Brent was at $79.67, up 0.87% on the day.
Gold consolidated above the key $1,800 per ounce level on Tuesday, after a sharp retreat in the last session.
Spot gold added 0.7% to $1,812.52 an ounce. U.S. gold futures gained 0.83% to $1,814.30 an ounce.
(Editing by David Evans and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
Source: One America News Network
