Before the bell, we see some encouraging news from world markets, as analysts look at the last 24 hours and parse what’s happening on financial exchanges that are not in our time zones.
“Stock markets were mostly higher Wednesday after news that China’s economy grew at a better than expected 6.4% annual pace in the last quarter failed to entice wary investors focused on weaker U.S. corporate earnings,” writes Elaine Kurtenbach.
Kurtenbach points out that the German index and French indices rose, while Britain’s FTSE lost, and futures for the Dow and the S&P 500 are both up .2%.
Another pin stuck in the U.S. News & World Report article is the idea of ‘mysterious growth.’
Earnings reports and first-quarter results for a range of companies are not thrilling many Wall Street investors who feel like future growth will be relatively weak in the short term.
“It’s not entirely clear what is behind this strength. Growth in industrial sales for export edged up last month from 4.2% year-on-year to 5.7% but doesn’t stand out as especially strong,” Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said according to U.S. News and World Reporting yesterday.
We’ll have to see where the indices go today and the rest of the week. We’ve already seen some mysterious growth in the sense that markets keep climbing despite news of trade tensions and erratic White House decisions.
How long they can keep that up is a running game among investors and analysts who are experienced in looking at both the short-term and the long-term picture. In a way, it makes sense for U.S. markets to rise based on any Chinese growth, based on the number of U.S. Treasury bonds held by the Middle Kingdom.
Update: 10:30: SP500, DJIA, NASDAQ all tanking. Stay tuned.
