© Reuters. PHOTO: Man in front of a stock exchange board in Tokyo
Swati Pandey
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Asian stocks strengthened Monday amid renewed hopes for a coronavirus vaccine after AstraZeneca (NYSE 🙂 resumed Phase 3 trials, although sentiment was still cautious ahead of a big week of central bank meetings in the UK, Japan and USA. States.
The broadest Asia-Pacific stock index outside Japan () MSCI rose 0.7% for the second straight session.
Australian stocks () gained 0.6%, while Japanese Nikkei () added 0.7%. China’s stocks began to rally steadily, with the blue-chip index () up 0.6%.
US stock futures, the S&P 500 e-minis (), jumped more than 1% after a mixed session on Wall Street last week.
Friday marks six months since the coronavirus was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11.
Since then, the world’s largest economies have plunged into recession and millions of people have lost their jobs, prompting central banks around the world to launch unprecedented stimulus.
The bazooka of politics supported financial markets: the S & P500 () rose 22%, the 10-year Treasury yield fell 20.4 basis points, and the dollar () fell 3.3%. The most successful major currency to date has been the Australian dollar. , an increase of 11.9%, thanks to a healthy appetite for risk.
“This is a really wild ride and is likely to continue as the results of the Phase 3 vaccine begin to show in the coming weeks,” NAB analyst Tapas Strickland said in a note on Monday.
AstraZeneca (L 🙂 said over the weekend that it has resumed UK clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine, one of the most advanced in development, after receiving the green light from security authorities.
Late trials of an experimental vaccine, developed in collaboration with researchers at Oxford University, were suspended last week due to illness in one of the study participants in the UK, which raised doubts about its early introduction.
We’ve been waiting for a vaccine to help lift the world out of isolation caused by the coronavirus.
“The opening of the global economy prompts us to recommend a long position in a basket of 14 lagging ‘back to work’ stocks versus a basket of 14 major ‘COVID-19 winners’,” BCA Research said in a statement.
“While we maintain a cyclical and long-term bullish outlook for the broader market, a short-term correction for technical and (geo) political reasons is likely,” it said.
“Possible short-term rollback.”
Later this week, the US Federal Reserve will hold a two-day policy meeting, which is expected to keep rates and clarify the already announced move to inflation targeting.
In addition, “the Fed will be less proactive in tightening policies than in the past,” said NAB’s Strickland.
The Bank of Japan and the Bank of England will announce their decisions on Thursday.
The focus of Asia will be on the election of Japan’s new prime minister. Voting in the party room is expected to begin at 05:00 GMT.
Major currencies were in trouble on Monday.
The US dollar was largely stable against the yen at 106.11. , far from its 101.2 low this year.
The euro exchange rate () remained unchanged at $ 1.1849. IN was virtually unchanged at $ 0.7285, while the pound sterling rose slightly to $ 1.2823.
In terms of commodities, US oil () jumped 0.7% to $ 37.58 per barrel. Brent oil () rose in price by 0.5% to $ 40 per barrel.
Gold was solid, with spot prices at a price of $ 1,949.7 an ounce.