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Asian stock markets ended up Friday, boosted in particular by the larger-than-expected decline in unemployment in the United States, relegating the pandemic and tensions over Hong Kong in the background.
The US stock markets are closed Friday to celebrate Independence Day.
In Europe, the markets are down in mid-session. In London, the FTSE 100 fell 88 points, or 1.41%, to 6,151 points. In Paris, the CAC 40 lost 51 points, or 1.01%, to 4,998 points. In Frankfurt, the DAX lost 83 points, or 0.66%, to 12,525 points.
Back in Asia, the flagship index in Tokyo Nikkei rose 0.72% to 22,306.48 points and the index expanded Topix from 0.62% to 1,552.33 points. Over the whole of the past week, the Nikkei has however declined by almost 1%.
The index Hang Seng of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which had soared Thursday (+ 2.85%), took another 0.99% Friday to finish at 25,373.12 points.
Mainland Chinese stock markets also ended up sharply, the composite index of Shanghai having appreciated by 2.01% to 3,152.81 points and that of Shenzhen from 1.28% to 2,041.89 points.
Investors in China also welcomed the growth in activity in services in the country, which reached its highest level in ten years in June, another sign of the resumption of activity in the country, the first to have been affected by the coronavirus by the end of 2019.
Wall Street had climbed Thursday before an extended weekend due to the US national holiday on Saturday, driven by the record number of jobs created in June in the United States and a larger than expected decline in the unemployment rate.
“The market turns to the new quarter July-September, when growth should make a comeback after the figures (from US employment, editor’s note) confirmed that the worst for companies had passed”, according to Nobuhiko Kuramochi de Mizuho Securities, quoted by the Bloomberg agency.
The spread of the pandemic in the United States remains worrying, however: a new record of 53,000 new cases of COVID-19 has been recorded in the country in the last 24 hours, according to the reference count of Johns Hopkins University.
Sino-US tensions also remain under scrutiny by investors, after the US Congress passed a law Thursday to punish Chinese officials applying the repressive new security rules in Hong Kong. This text must however be signed by President Donald Trump to enter into force.
On the oil side
Oil prices ebbed Friday: around 5:10 a barrel of American crude oil lost 1.3% to 40.12 dollars and that of a barrel of Brent North Sea ceded 1.21% to 42.62 dollars.
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