SYDNEY- Asian stocks tracked Wall Street higher on Monday while the dollar was pinned near five-week lows as investors wagered on an eventual slowdown in US monetary tightening, albeit after sharp hikes in June and July.
Helping to mellow the mood was news that Shanghai authorities will cancel many conditions for businesses to resume work from Wednesday, easing a city-wide lockdown that began two months ago.
The Memorial Day holiday in the United States could make for a thin session ahead of the end of the month, but MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan still climbed 1.2 percent to a three-week high.
Japan’s Nikkei added 2.0 percent and South Korea rose 1.2 percent. Chinese blue chips firmed 0.8 percent.
Nasdaq futures added another 0.8 percent, after gaining 6.8 percent last week, while S&P 500 futures firmed 0.5 percent ESc1, having rallied 6.6 percent last week in their best week so far this year.
EUROSTOXX 50 futures gained 0.6 percent and FTSE futures 0.1 percent.
Investors have seized on hints the Federal Reserve, once it has hiked aggressively over the next two months, might then slow its tightening.
“Hopes, naive or otherwise, for a pause in the Fed tightening cycle as early as September continue to resonate,” said Ray Attrill, head of FX strategy at NAB. “Money markets have reduced their pricing for additional Fed rate rises by end-2022 from 193bps to 180bps.”
“This though still implies rate rises at every remaining Fed meeting of 2022, including 50bps hikes in both June and July and at least 25bps at each of the remaining three.”
Just the chance of a less hawkish Fed was enough to see Treasuries rebound, with 10-year note yields just above a six-week low at 2.74 percent. That is down from a peak of 3.203 percent on May 9.
