Global market index , MSCI index of world stocks, on Friday, December 22, was flat. .MIWO00000PUS
The Asia-Pacific region’s equities took cues from Wall Street, after all three of its indexes posted gains overnight on strength in bank and energy stocks and news the U.S. economy grew in the third quarter at its fastest pace in more than two years.
Supporting U.S. stocks this week, and by extension global equities, was the passage through Congress of a $1.5 trillion tax-cutting bill.MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was 0.5 percent higher.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.3 percent .HSI and Shanghai .SSEC dipped 0.1 percent.
Australian stocks advanced 0.15 percent, South Korea’s KOSPI .KS11 gained 0.45 percent and Japan’s Nikkei .N225 rose 0.15 percent.
In commodities, U.S. crude futures CLc1 slipped 0.5 percent to $58.07 per barrel, an earlier rise losing steam as traders sold to adjust positions ahead of the year-end. [O/R]The contracts had reached a nine-day peak of $58.38 overnight as OPEC started working on plans for an exit strategy from its deal to cut crude supplies, fuelling hopes it would not end supply cuts abruptly. [O/R]
Brent LCOc1 was down 0.3 percent at $64.72 a barrel after closing Thursday at $64.90 a barrel, its highest since June 2015.
The broader rise in commodities this week — copper on the London Metal Exchange CMCU3 reached a two-month high on Thursday — lifted the Australian dollar to $0.7718 AUD=D4, its highest since Nov. 2.
Spanish stocks and the euro fell, while Spanish government bond yields hit their highest levels in over a month after Catalan separatists wanting to break away from Spain won a regional election.
The result battered Spanish stocks, with Spain’s IBEX .IBEX falling as much as 1.1 percent as European bourses opened. Financial stocks were the biggest drag on stock indices across the region, with the euro zone banks index falling 0.8 percent. .SX7E
The pan-European STOXX index , dipped only 0.1 percent as Spanish stocks dominated the biggest fallers, confirming analyst expectations that any shake-out from the Catalonia vote would be mostly confined to Spain.
Germany’s DAX .GDAXI edged down 0.1 percent, in line with France’s CAC 40 .FCHI.
Spanish stocks were Europe’s best-performing benchmark for much of the year, before October’s independence referendum sent the IBEX tumbling. It was last 9 percent down from its May peak.
Spain’s 10-year borrowing costs ES10YT=TWEB rose 5 basis points to a one-month high of 1.52 percent in early trades, before settling back at 1.49 percent.
The premium investors demand for holding Spanish bonds over top-rated German peers DE10YT=TWEB widened 6 bps to around 111 bps at one stage.
