Global stocks continued their bearish momentum while the US dollar remained gripping high levels with investors continuing to await the outcome of the Federal Reserve (Fed) meeting on its monetary policy early Thursday morning.
Wall Street markets ended lower and 10 -year U.S. yields rising after U.S. producer prices rose more than expected in November have signaled that inflation will remain high temporarily.
The Fed is expected to announce the acceleration of its bond -buying program and signal changes to next year’s rate hike as a measure to control the inflation surge ahead of its meeting on Thursday.
This week saw major central banks set to meet initiated by the Fed on Wednesday which convened for 2 days, followed by the European Central Bank (ECB) as well as the Bank of England (BoE) on Thursday and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) on Friday.
MSCI’s worldwide stock gauge fell 0.75% and the pan-European STOXX 600 index lost 0.84%.
The Dow Jones Industrial average fell 106.77 points or 0.3% at 35,544.18, the S&P 500 lost 34.88 points or 0.75% at 4,634.09 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 175.64 points or 1.14% at 15,237.64.
Emerging market shares lost 0.69% and MSCI’s broad index of Asia-Pacific stocks outside Japan fell 0.77% after the Asian Development Bank (ADB) cut its growth forecast for Asia which has reflected the risks posed by the Omicron variant.
China’s CSI300 index fell 0.67% after Tianjin health authorities detected the first case of Omicron in the country.
The dollar index jumped 0.217% while the Euro fell 0.25% at $ 1.1255 due to the impact of the Fed’s expectations that it will tighten policy faster than the ECB.
10 -year treasury note yields rose 1.5 basis points at 1.439% while treasury bond yields added 1.2 basis points at 1.825%.
US crude oil prices were down 56 cents or 0.8% at $ 70.73 a barrel and Brent crude oil prices were down 0.9% or 69 cents at $ 73.70.
