Record-high stocks tremble as big week for market risk looms
MSCI's global equity index was 0.3 per cent lower after hitting an all-time peak on Thursday, after Japan's Topix index ended the day 0.9 per cent lower, having also hit a record high a day earlier.
Futures trading signalled Wall Street's Nasdaq Composite would flatline later in the day, with sentiment still buoyed by Google parent Alphabet's robust earnings that propelled the tech-heavy index to its latest peak on Thursday.
Investors said they did not expect the markets' glass-half-full approach to trade war risks to last if jobs growth and earnings slow but the U.S. Federal Reserve also douses expectations that it will rush to the rescue by easing monetary policy.
With the Fed's next rate decision on July 29 as Chair Jerome Powell comes under pressure from Trump to quit, August 1 brings the latest batch of monthly U.S. jobs data and the deadline for U.S. trade deals with Europe and other countries.
"We've come to this sort of real, sort of pinch point of high risk, of things going in either direction, and markets have just breezed through it so far," Premier Miton CIO Neil Birrell said.
"I'm genuinely struggling to work out why the bond markets seem relatively complacent and why equity markets have kept going up," he said, especially with disruption caused by trade uncertainty now showing up in companies' earnings.
TECH, CENTRAL BANKS
The dollar index, was heading for a 0.6 per cent weekly drop, in the latest sign that U.S. policy and debt risk meant it was no longer viewed by investors as a haven asset when stock markets turn lower.
"We know that the dollar tends to depreciate when there is a proper risk-on wave,' Amundi Investment Institute cross-asset strategist Federico Cesarini said.
'But the other side of the correlation, risk-off (and) dollar up, is not with us anymore.'
Tech titans Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft may all issue tariff-related updates with next week's earnings reports, just as parts of the tech sector have shown signs of revenues turning hard to forecast because of stockpiling and trade anxiety.
Chipmaker Intel's shares dropped 5 per cent in pre-market trade on Friday as it forecast steeper quarterly losses than expected and said it had halted or scrapped new factory projects in the U.S. and Europe.
Money markets are only pricing about 42 basis points (bps) of Fed easing this year, setting next week's monthly non-farm payrolls report up as a major risk event if hiring has slowed and rate cut expectations have not risen.
Trump has kept up pressure on Powell to cut rates after a rare presidential visit to the central bank on Thursday, although he said he did not intend to fire the head of the central bank, as he has frequently suggested he would.
U.S. 10-year Treasury yields were steady at 4.41 per cent while two-year yields, which track monetary policy bets, were also flat at 3.925 per cent.
The Bank of Japan has its own policy announcement on Thursday, and Prime Minister Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party holds a meeting on the same day.
That's after the European Central Bank held rates steady on Thursday and was viewed by traders as likely to pause further cuts until the end of the year.
The euro was steady against the dollar on Friday at $1.178, although German government debt sold off, with the yield on benchmark 10-year Bunds up 4 basis points (bps) at 2.726 per cent.
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