Tokyo — TOKYO (AP) — Global stocks were mixed on Friday after Wall Street hit new records and indices rose on enthusiasm for artificial intelligence technology.
France’s CAC 40 was down 1.3% at 7,606.73 at the open, while Germany’s DAX was down 0.5% to 18,174.98. Britain’s FTSE 100 was down 0.2% to 8,143.79. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.5% and the S&P 500 was down 0.2%.
In Asian markets, the Nikkei rose, closing 0.2% higher at 38,814.56, after the Bank of Japan left monetary policy unchanged, even as it signaled its intention to move away from an ultra-accommodative policy stance and begin reducing its bond purchases.
“Even if the BOJ wants to signal the direction of monetary tightening, the key guide is gradualism,” Mizuho Bank’s Tan Jin Yi wrote in an editorial. “The reality is that the underlying confidence in the economy is fragile at best, if not dangerously so.”
The Bank of Japan said it would finalize details of reducing its vast holdings of government bonds acquired while pumping trillions of dollars into the economy and would start after its next meeting in July, sending the yen sliding against the dollar, which has risen from about 140 yen to more than 157 yen over the past year.
Early Friday, the U.S. dollar rose to 157.62 yen from 157.02 yen. The euro fell to $1.0709 from $1.0739.
Elsewhere in Asia, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.3% to 7,724.30. South Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.1% to 2,758.42. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 0.9% to 17,941.78 and the Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.1% to 3,032.63.
The latest U.S. inflation report released Thursday showed that prices paid at wholesale prices weren’t as bad as economists expected: Prices actually fell from April to May, when economists had predicted they would rise.
The S&P 500 was up 0.2% from the all-time high it set the previous day, the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.3% from its all-time high, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.2%.
High interest rates are dragging down parts of the economy, particularly manufacturing. A separate report released Thursday showed that more U.S. workers filed for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected, but the number is still low by historical standards.
Wall Street is hopeful that job market and economic growth will continue to slow, easing inflationary pressures but not enough to spark a deep recession.
Most Fed officials plan to cut rates once or twice this year, and traders expect cuts to start as early as September.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude fell 58 cents to $78.04 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while the international standard Brent crude lost 47 cents to $82.28 a barrel.
