Rishaad asia stocks under pressure, but Global Equities are at record highs. Lets bring up chart 5892. Ly is all amid this extreme low volatility. It is the worlds best regional rally in turquoise. The 60 day volatility in the white line has dropped 5. 9 to the lowest since 1988. In line with u. S. And europe, and the vix markets hitting new lows. The calm, but no storm, at least for the time being. Pause. May be a muted at lofty highs when it comes to emerging markets in asia, japan in particular. I dont think you can blame investors for taking a breather. Lets get it over to sophie with 30 market reaction. Sophie we have corporate earnings perhaps giving impetus to profit taking for japanese investors given those highs. Leadingei 225 benchmarks in asia lower here it asian stocks falling for a second session. I want to highlight the currencies space. The korean won leading losses as importers why dollars. B. N. P. Paribas says it is better late than never to buy the currency as cyclic
Ramy inocencio has the latest. Ramy we are in the dog days of summer and all my about 18 or 19 on the day. We do have a couple of wins pushing our way with the news from the Stanley Fischer and falling oil, which we will get to. Pretty muchs p are a flat line. Down as well and not a lot of movement here. Go into more specific information with the sectors and their help. Basically 50 50. Utilities right now are of the most and health care had been higher because of that pfizer deal but is paring gains. Most in terms of the sector. Before we get to that, lets talk about asp. Gas is on the rise seeing it best day in the past three weeks or so. Dominion resources are up on the order of 1 . Natural gas is up, deftly off its session highs, but theres a forecast that during the Labor Day Weekend that there might be higher than expected temperatures on the order of three degrees or so across the united states. Oil is on the downtrend. Thats falling by 3 and near session lows with gold and silv
Course. The feds ability to predict where rates will go is limited, because she says disturbances continues to buffer the economy. Yellen adds the federal funds in the longer3 run. That is higher than most people would put it. Much of the rest of the speeches on the fed policy actions and how they have actions and recovery. Yellen goes on to say that at this point we need those tools going forward, although she says the fed is not at this moment studying the idea of targeting higher inflation or nominal gdp. She goes on to talk about the need for some fiscal policy going forward, but doesnt make a big deal of it. Yellen says in the future, the economy should grow. Interestingly, the fed chair also makes a defense of the ability to respond to the next recession, even with low Interest Rates. She says in the past Interest Rates has started with the fed higher than it should be. Interest rates so low, that is not going to be a problem. Vonnie we have seen the twoyear Interest Rates rise.
What a week it has been, where we have powered higher once again can i want to head to the markets desk where bloombergs Ramy Inocencio has the latest. Stocks are on track for their fifth week of gains, and we are Holding Strong with markets in the green with about one hour left in this trading session. The s p 500 is up. 33 . The dow is up by. 5 there. Interestingly, i want to talk to you about what has been happening year to date. We have seen two slips. Date, the s p 500 is holding onto gains, up. 10 today, and rising a little bit. Yesterday, you will remember it popped into positive territory briefly, but pulled back. The dow is now up by nearly 1 year to date. Yesterday, it pulled into the green. The nasdaq, as you can see, a ways off from climbing into positive, down by 4. 4 . Hop into my bloomberg, and lets take another check as to the s p 500s 10 sectors the imap section. You can see we are split down the middle five sectors in the green, five sectors in the red. As it has been
Higher growth areas . We have got some breaking economic numbers on the housing market. Julie hyman is at the markets desk with more. Julie existing home sales rebounding last month. We got numbers for the month before that were disappointing but now we have a climb of 5. 1 month over month to 5. 3 3 million on an annualized basis. It compares with februarys 5. 0 7 million. The median forecast, 5. 2 8 million. A larger rebound than had been anticipated and does exhibit some resilience in a u. S. Housing market especially going into the spring selling season. 3hat number coming in at 5. 3 million, an increase of 5. 1 month over month. The existing home sales number does not tend to have a big impact on stocks. At much appears to be having big impact on the overall direction we are seeing today. The dow and s p, little change. Nasdaq doing a little better. Any increase means we are at new highs for the year above 2100 as we have been watching for the s p 500. Above 18,000 for the down. A