European shares closed higher on Thursday after a series of lukewarm sessions, as investors welcomed the U.S. Federal Reserve's overnight interest rate cut and assessed a policy decision from the Swiss National Bank. The pan-European STOXX 600 ended 0.5% higher at 581.17 points, after a muted start to the session amid renewed worries about lofty tech valuations following cloud computing giant Oracle's hefty AI spending plans. Major regional bourses were broadly higher, with France's CAC 40 up 0.8% and London's FTSE 100 up 0.5%. In the STOXX 600, at least 19 sectors were in the green, with...
The Dow jumped more than 600 points to a fresh record and the S&P 500 reversed early session losses to trade marginally higher, while the Nasdaq pared losses to roughly 0.5% on Thursday afternoon as investors rotated out of richly valued tech names and into cyclicals and beaten down value stocks after the Fed cut rates by 25 basis points to 3.50% to 3.75% and signalled a conditional easing path. Visa rose over 5% on an upgrade by Bank of America, while Mastercard and American Express added more than 4% and 1.5% respectively. Major names including JPMorgan (+2.2%), UnitedHealth (+3.1%),...
Asian stocks opened higher on Friday (December 12) morning after Wall Street and global equity indexes set new records. The MSCI Asia Stock Index rose about 0.5% early in the session, with the Japanese and Australian benchmarks gaining about 1%. Positive sentiment stemmed from the Fed's third consecutive interest rate cut, which encouraged investors to venture into riskier assets. Among leading stocks, SoftBank Group surged more than 5% after news that the company was considering potential acquisitions, including data center operator Switch Inc. In the US, the S&P 500 closed up 0.2% on...