SINGAPORE — Stocks struggled for direction on Thursday while the dollar stumbled as the euphoria from market tailwinds earlier in the week fizzled out, with traders looking to US data later in the day for further catalysts.
US Treasury yields were elevated and the benchmark 10-year yield rose to a one-month top, in part due to worries over President Donald Trump’s budget package that would add trillions of dollars to the US debt.
Investors were greeted with a plethora of good news earlier this week from a US-China trade-war truce to a raft of headline-grabbing investment deals from the Middle East during Trump’s Gulf tour, in moves that breathed new life into battered global stocks.
But most of the optimism died down by Thursday, leaving MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was little changed and Wall Street futures slightly lower after notching marginal gains during the overnight cash session.
“We’ve had a huge party, everyone’s hung over, and now we’re just recuperating and waiting for the next big party,” said Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG.
While the trade deal between the US and China gave markets some reason to cheer, the absence of clarity over Trump’s trade policies has left markets with a sense of lingering uncertainty over the global economic outlook.
Investors were also waiting for further details of trade deals with other countries.
“I get the feeling there is a little bit of a reluctance to take the market higher from here,” said Sycamore.
“I don’t think foreign investors are going to be rushing back to that overweight position they’ve had in US equities because of that confidence that has been shaken during the events over the past couple of months, both from tariffs and lawmakers.”
Nasdaq futures were down 0.02 percent while S&P 500 futures fell 0.13 percent. EUROSTOXX 50 futures eased 0.09 percent while FTSE futures ticked up 0.08 percent.
