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Markets cheer, tentatively, after U.S. - China trade truce
Chinese shares led the move, rising as high as 3 percent in morning trading, with the market in Hong Kong following closely.
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Chinese shares led the move, rising as high as 3 percent in morning trading, with the market in Hong Kong following closely. Investors in other markets were more restrained, sending shares up less than 2 percent in places like Japan, Australia and South Korea.
Futures contracts that try to predict the performance of the S&P 500 stock index were up more than 1 percent Monday, suggesting Wall Street would also open with a bounce.
Other kinds of financial markets also responded to the truce, which was reached Saturday. Soybeans rose on commodities markets on the prospect that China would begin buying American-grown crops again. China’s currency, the renminbi, strengthened against the U.S. dollar.
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The truce, forged over a dinner in Buenos Aires, Argentina, between the leaders of the word’s two largest economies, merely postpones a reckoning over trade. Under the deal, the United States will postpone an increase in tariffs set for Jan. 1, and it sets a March 1 deadline for the two sides to reach a more extensive pact.
But the deal leaves in place U.S. tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods as well as retaliatory measures enacted by Beijing. It remains unclear whether the two sides will be able to resolve thorny questions such as China’s government support for sensitive industries, a group of policies that the Trump administration has criticized, and protections for American-created intellectual property.
Given those unresolved questions, investor enthusiasm may not last.
“We anticipate that things are still likely to get worse before they get better,” Kerry Craig, global market strategist for the asset management arm of J.P. Morgan, the investment bank, said in an emailed statement.
“Small rays of light such as this create tactical opportunities for investors,” he added, “but on balance we would be more cautious on positioning heading into 2019.”
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Chinese investors were perhaps more cheered in part because the official news media there de-emphasized the temporary nature of the agreement. It also played down continued areas of disagreement, such as intellectual property protections.
At midday in Asia, shares in Shanghai were up 2.9 percent, while Hong Kong was up 2.7 percent. South Korean shares were up 1.9 percent and Tokyo was up 1.4 percent.
The New York Times
Carlos Tejada © 2018 The New York Times
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