| schema:articleBody
| - US stocks rose at open Wednesday on a strong start to the earnings season from major banks, while European markets were mixed and bitcoin booked another record ahead of a crucial listing. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo all beat analysts' forecasts for their bottom lines and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5 percent while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 were little moved. "Robust capital markets activity, improved credit quality and a hot housing market were instrumental in driving the blowout results," noted Patrick J. O'Hare of Briefing.com. Nevertheless, "these stocks, and many others in the financial sector, had made huge moves... in anticipation of this very good news, so the tepid response on the actual news is understandable," he added. Earnings growth among S&P 500 companies "is projected to be well above 20 percent year-on-year... the highest rate since the third quarter of 2018," Charles Schwab analysts noted. JPMorgan "believes that the economy has the potential to have extremely robust, multi-year growth" thanks to "stimulus spending, potential infrastructure spending, continued quantitative easing, strong consumer and business balance sheets and euphoria around the potential end of the pandemic," Schwab added. Across the Atlantic, London and Paris were up while Frankfurt was close to flat as Europe enters its own earnings season, with UK supermarket giant Tesco announcing a surge in profits. Oil prices added two percent as the International Energy Agency raised its expectations for the recovery in oil demand following hiked forecasts for global growth this year. Meanwhile US Federal Reserve chairman Jay Powell was expected to speak later Wednesday in his first appearance since a strong consumer inflation reading the day before. There has been a worry in recent months that the expected strong global recovery will send prices racing higher and force central banks to taper the ultra-loose monetary policies that have helped spur a year-long equity rally. US 10-year Treasury bond yields, which have risen to around one-year highs on expectations of higher interest rates in future, eased back after the inflation data. O'Hare predicted that Powell "will acknowledge (the higher readings) and then summarily declare that high inflation prints in the near term are expected to be transitory" -- meaning the Fed can keep its foot on the accelerator for now. US traders initially sold off shares in J&J in response to news that US authorities had recommended pausing its Covid-19 shot owing to blood clot fears, which was then followed by the firm saying it would delay the European rollout. The move comes as AstraZeneca's jab has raised similar concerns, and deals a blow to the global immunisation rollout. However, analysts pointed out that other vaccines were seeing no problems. Pfizer also said it had enough production capacity to produce more than two billion doses this year, while the EU Comission said it would receive an additional 50 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech shot in the second quarter to help make up for the J&J shortfall. "This will substantially help consolidate the rollout of our vaccination campaigns," Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said. Bitcoin hit a all-time high of $64,870 ahead of the much-anticipated debut of the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange on the Nasdaq later in the day. New York - Dow: UP 0.5 percent at 33,849.91 points London - FTSE 100: UP 0.4 percent at 6,920.90 Paris - CAC 40: UP 0.4 percent at 6,206.82 Frankfurt - DAX 30: FLAT at 15,232.43 EURO STOXX 50: UP 0.3 percent at 3,977.71 Tokyo - Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.4 percent at 29,620.99 (close) Hong Kong - Hang Seng Index: UP 1.4 percent at 28,900.83 (close) Shanghai - Composite: UP 0.6 percent at 3,416.72 (close) Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1959 from $1.1947 at 2050 GMT Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3777 from $1.3751 Euro/pound: DOWN at 86.80 pence from 86.89 pence Dollar/yen: DOWN at 109.04 yen from 109.06 yen Brent North Sea crude: UP 2.0 percent at $64.96 per barrel West Texas Intermediate: UP 2.0 percent at $61.38 per barrel dan-bcp/rfj/tgb/bp
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)