{"id":5369,"date":"2023-05-19T21:12:14","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T16:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=5369"},"modified":"2023-05-19T21:12:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T16:12:16","slug":"most-asian-european-markets-rally-on-us-debt-deal-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/business\/most-asian-european-markets-rally-on-us-debt-deal-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Most Asian, European markets rally on US debt deal hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hong Kong, May 19: Most markets built on a global rally Friday as traders grow increasingly hopeful that US lawmakers will hammer out a deal to lift the debt ceiling and avert a calamitous default.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the regional mood was tempered by losses in Hong Kong and Shanghai fuelled by worries over China’s economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After weeks of lumbering talks on Capitol Hill, congressional leaders appeared ready to put a proposal to lawmakers before the government runs out of cash, said to be around June 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his most upbeat remarks yet on the high-stakes standoff, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said: “We’re not there — we haven’t agreed to anything yet — but I see the path (where) we could come to an agreement.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCarthy secured the Speaker’s gavel in January by pledging to his party’s ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus that any raise in the borrowing limit would only come with an evisceration of the federal budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer were planning to call for a vote in the coming days, and on Friday, a White House official said “steady progress” was being made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The optimism was shared by other lawmakers, with Texas Republican Kay Granger saying a deal was “close”. And Democrat Steny Hoyer said: “I think we are going to get a deal”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But McCarthy ally Patrick McHenry, chairman of the US House Financial Services Committee, warned the two sides were “not close to being done”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, all three main indexes on Wall Street rallied, extending the more than one percent gains enjoyed Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Asia, Tokyo raced higher again, building on a recent surge in the Nikkei to a three-decade high even as data showed Japanese inflation continued to sit well above the central bank’s target, adding to pressure for it to tighten monetary policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sydney, Seoul, Singapore, Mumbai, Taipei, Manila, Wellington and Jakarta were also well up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Although there has been no official pen to paper, there is enough white smoke emanating from Capitol Hill for investors to cheer after policymakers in Washington said that a bill to raise the US debt ceiling may be put on the table next week,” said SPI Asset Management’s Stephen Innes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Hong Kong sank more than one percent owing to a sharp drop in tech firms after ecommerce titan Alibaba reported below-par earnings that reinforced concerns about China’s stuttering economy and consumer demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shanghai also fell, and traders are keeping an eye on the central People’s Bank of China to see if it unveils any fresh stimulus measures following a string of below-forecast economic figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The recovery in China is slowing down,” Ashish Shah, at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said. “We all expected it wouldn’t be a straight line — you will go through waves.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hong Kong, May 19: Most markets built on a global rally Friday as traders grow increasingly hopeful that US lawmakers will hammer out a deal to lift the debt ceiling and avert a calamitous default. But the regional mood was tempered by losses in Hong Kong and Shanghai fuelled by worries over China’s economy. After […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,3,2623],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-business","category-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}