By Chris Prentice and Samuel Indyk
NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) -European stocks closed at a one-week high on strong financial stocks and hopes of a Ukraine ceasefire, while global equities and major Wall Street indexes turned lower on Thursday.
Oil price turned lower after the Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin would meet with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Prices of gold, seen as a safe haven in volatile times, extended gains to a two-week high.
Wall Street was down following a report that Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller was Trump’s top candidate to become the central bank chair, raising concerns over the Federal Reserve’s independence. [.N]
MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe fell 0.19 point, or 0.02%, to 933.04.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.77% to 43,851.17, the S&P 500 retreated 0.47% to 6,315.33, and the Nasdaq Composite gave up 0.30% to 21,104.91.
“[There] are persistent risks to the downside. Downside surprises in official data are increasing,” Capital.com analyst Kyle Rodda wrote in a note. “Valuations are also stretched, with forward price to earnings hovering around the highest in four years. And trade uncertainty persists.”
Higher U.S. tariffs on imports from dozens of countries kicked in on Thursday, raising the average U.S. import duty to the highest in a century.
European shares logged their biggest daily rise in over two weeks on Thursday, boosted by financial stocks as investors weighed mixed corporate earnings and U.S. tariffs.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index closed at a one-week high. Europe’s FTSEurofirst 300 index rose 0.93%.
Plans for a meeting between Trump and Putin over the war in Ukraine also helped sentiment in European equities and underpinned the euro.
A ceasefire “would be an extra positive,” said Emmanuel Cau, Barclays head of European equity strategy.
The Bank of England cut interest rates, but four of its nine policymakers, worried about inflation, voted to keep rates unchanged.
The split vote suggested the BoE’s run of rate cuts might be nearing an end. Sterling strengthened 0.47% to $1.3416.
“The vote split is clearly a lot more hawkish than I was expecting,” said Dominic Bunning, head of G10 FX strategy at Nomura.
Japanese shares earlier hit a record high. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan closed up 1.03%, as Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.65%.
Taiwan’s stock benchmark jumped as much as 2.6% to a more than one-year peak. Shares in chipmaker TSMC, which this year announced additional investment in its U.S. production facilities and so is expected to be relatively unscathed by the U.S. tariff on imported chips, soared to a record high.
The U.S. dollar gained 0.12% against other currencies, with the euro down 0.21% at $1.1634.
The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes rose 1.4 basis points to 4.246%.
In commodities, spot gold rose 0.68% to $3,391.39 an ounce.
Global oil prices wiped out earlier gains, with Brent crude futures down 0.45% at $66.59 per barrel and U.S. crude 0.51% lower at $64.02.
(Reporting by Samuel Indyk and Kevin Buckland; Editing by and Susan Fenton, Kirsten Donovan and Leslie Adler)
