Technology shares surge as US stocks pad records

Bloomberg

US stocks plowed to new records, with technology shares pacing gains, as investors speculated the Trump administration will make progress on trade spats. The pound rallied after the European Union revived hopes of a Brexit deal before the UK exits the common area in March.
The S&P 500 Index jumped past 2,900, a level it first breached on Tuesday, as Amazon.com and Alphabet rose following an upbeat report from Morgan Stanley. The Nasdaq indexes hit fresh highs. Data that showed strength in the American economy bolstered the greenback. Emerging-market assets were under pressure and Treasuries edged higher.
Earlier, shares in Japan and Australia set the pace as the MSCI Asia Pacific Index climbed, though stocks in China dropped. The euro weakened after the Italian government was reported to be hoping for a new program of European Central Bank bond purchases. Investors piled into American equities as the Northern hemisphere’s traditional vacation period grinds to a close. US stocks remain at an all-time high, while the rest of the world has been playing a gradual game of catch-up. However risks abound, from legal threats to President Trump’s administration and turmoil in emerging markets to ongoing trade tension between the world’s major economies.
“We don’t know where China is on this,” David Ader, chief market strategist at Informa Financial Intelligence, said on Bloomberg Television. “I tend to be more pessimistic that we are going to come away with trade deals that are going to make everybody satisfied, but we are trading headlines, we are trading the sensitivity to those headlines, so for the moment it looks good.”
Elsewhere, the Australian dollar dropped with bond yields as expectations for central bank interest-rate increases were slashed.
Emerging-market currencies retreated as Turkey’s lira fell a third day.
China’s official factory PMI are due Friday. Earnings are due from companies including Pernod Ricard and Dollar General. The Bank of Korea sets policy on Friday. Weak jobs growth has cooled speculation of an interest-rate increase.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3 percent to 2,907.39 at 10:55 a.m. New York time. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index increased 0.2 percent. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index gained 0.2 percent to the highest in almost three weeks. The MSCI Emerging Market Index fell 0.1 percent, the biggest fall in two weeks.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index slipped less than 0.1 percent. The euro declined 0.3 percent to $1.1663. The British pound rose 1 percent to $1.2995. The Japanese yen decreased 0.2 percent to 111.36 per dollar, the weakest in more than three weeks.
The yield on 10-year Treasuries fell less than one basis point to 2.88 percent. Germany’s 10-year yield gained two basis points to 0.40 percent, the highest in more than three weeks. Britain’s 10-year yield increased one basis point to 1.466 percent, the highest in 14 weeks. The spread of Italy’s 10-year bonds over Germany’s climbed one basis point to 2.8121 percentage points to the biggest premium in more than a week.
West Texas Intermediate crude increased 0.7 percent to $69.02 a barrel, the highest in seven weeks. Gold rose 0.2 percent to $1,203.41 an ounce.