World shares jump to 14-month highs after heavy central bank week

By Lewis Krauskopf and Amanda Cooper

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - A gauge of global stock markets jumped to a fresh 14-month high on Friday, while the U.S. dollar headed for its biggest weekly slide since January following a heavy week of central bank meetings around the world.

The MSCI All-World index was up 0.3%, around its highest level since mid-April 2022, with Wall Street's main equity indexes modestly higher.

Ending an intense week of central bank actions, the Bank of Japan maintained its ultra-easy monetary policy on Friday despite stronger-than-expected inflation. Earlier in the week the Federal Reserve kept rates unchanged, while suggesting more hikes could come later in the year, and the European Central Bank hiked by a quarter-point.

"It's been a really busy week for investors," said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer with Independent Advisor Alliance. "We are seeing a little bit of a pause today in U.S. equity markets potentially digesting some of the information that we got for this week, but for the most part it's been a very strong week."

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 74.92 points, or 0.22%, to 34,482.98, the S&P 500 gained 11.92 points, or 0.27%, to 4,437.76 and the Nasdaq Composite added 3.40 points, or 0.02%, to 13,786.22.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.5%, while Japan's Nikkei rose 0.7% for a 10th straight week of gains.

In currency markets, the dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.17%, with the euro down 0.12% to $1.09.

Still, the dollar was set to log its biggest weekly percentage drop since mid-January.

Meanwhile, the yen fell to its lowest point against the euro in 15 years after the BOJ's decision. The Japanese currency also weakened 1.05% versus the greenback at 141.81 per dollar, dropping to a six-month trough.

"The yen is suffering from a big negative yield gap versus other G10 currencies," said Vassili Serebriakov, FX strategist at UBS in New York.

U.S. Treasury yields rose, with the benchmark 10-year yield rising after two straight days of declines as comments from Fed officials indicated the central bank was not yet done with its interest rate hikes.

Fed Governor Christopher Waller said at an economics conference that core inflation "is not coming down like I thought it would," which probably would require more tightening.

Benchmark 10-year notes were up about 5 basis points to 3.78%, from 3.73% late on Thursday.

Oil prices rose modestly and were on course for a weekly gain, as a market outlook tightened by higher Chinese demand and OPEC+ supply cuts was balanced by expected weakness in the global economy with the prospect of further interest rate hikes.

U.S. crude recently rose 0.35% to $70.87 per barrel and Brent was at $75.80, up 0.17% on the day.

 

(Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf in New York and Amanda Cooper in London; Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore and Chuck Mikolajczak, Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss in New York; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Matthew Lewis and Nick Zieminski)