Global shares rise as rally stalls on Wall St

Tokyo: Global shares were mostly higher on Thursday, after Wall Street’s big recent rally lost some momentum following a pair of potentially discouraging reports on the American economy.

France’s CAC 40 added 0.3 per cent in early trading to 7,826.43, while the German DAX rose 0.5 per cent to 24,378.64. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.1 per cent to 8,811.29. The future for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.2 per cent. The future for the S&P 500 gained nearly 0.1 per cent.

In Asian trading, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 0.5 per cent to finish at 37,554.49, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was little changed at 8,538.90. In South Korea, the Kospi jumped 1.5 per cent to 2,812.05 after the country’s new president and leading liberal politician Lee Jae-myung began his term, vowing to restart talks with North Korea and beef up a trilateral partnership with the US and Japan. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.1 per cent to 23,906.97, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.21 per cent to 3,384.10.

One report released earlier this week said that activity contracted for US retailers, finance companies and other businesses in the services industries last month, when economists were expecting to see growth. Businesses told the Institute for Supply Management in its survey that all the uncertainty created by tariffs is making it difficult for them to forecast and plan. A second report from ADP suggested US employers outside of the government hired far fewer workers last month than economists expected.

That could bode ill for Friday’s more comprehensive jobs report coming from the US Labour Department, which is one of Wall Street’s most anticipated data releases each month. So far, the US job market has remained remarkably resilient despite years of high inflation and now the threat of President Donald Trump’s high tariffs. But weakness there could undermine the rest of the economy.