World stock benchmarks were mixed on Monday as investors gauged whether the dollar will recover from a summer drop and a boost from last week’s strong U.S. jobs report faded.
KEEPING SCORE: Germany’s DAX fell 0.5 percent to 12,232 while the FTSE 100 in Britain edged 0.2 percent higher to 7,522. France’s CAC 40 shed 0.1 percent to 5,199. U.S. futures point to small gains on the open for Wall Street, with Dow and S&P 500 futures both gaining 0.1 percent.
WALL STREET: U.S. stock markets have been buoyant, leading gains globally in the past few weeks, amid mostly upbeat corporate earnings. Also helping was a weakening dollar, which tends to push up the share price of exporting U.S. companies. The dollar recovered somewhat on Friday, however, after the official U.S. jobs report came in strong, showing employers had added 209,000 jobs in July.
DOLLAR: The U.S. dollar climbed to 110.84 on Monday from 110.08 yen on Friday. It weakened, however, against the euro, which climbed to $1.1801 from $1.1774. The euro was below $1.06 as recently as April, before the dollar began weakening steadily.
ANALYST VIEWPOINT: The “big talking point on the trading floors over the weekend and this morning” is whether the dollar’s months-long decline is over and what that means for other markets, said Chris Weston, analyst at brokerage IG. “The question then is will we see follow through buying in the U.S. dollar this week?”
ASIA’S DAY: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 0.5 percent to 27,690.36 and South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.1 percent at 2,398.75. The S&P ASX 200 in Australia rose 0.9 percent to 5,773.60, while the Shanghai Composite index reversed earlier losses to climb 0.5 percent, ending at 3,279.46. India’s Sensex slipped 0.2 percent to 32,255.74. Taiwan’s benchmark jumped 0.7 percent, and shares in Southeast Asia were mostly lower.
ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude shed 47 cents to $49.11 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It added 55 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $49.58 per barrel on Friday. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 53 cents, to $51.89 a barrel.
