Pound hits highest level in 14 months
Billionaire Elon Musk is set to meet Emmanuel Macron in Paris today for the second time in just over a month as France seeks to win the Tesla boss’s favor and attract investment.
The French President confirmed earlier this week that he would meet the businessman to “tell the attractiveness of France and Europe” during a visit to France’s largest tech fair VivaTech earlier this week.
Following the talk with Mr. Macron, Mr. Musk will appear in front of thousands of viewers at VivaTech for what is said to be an hour-long “talk” with the event’s French founder, Maurice Levy.
5 things to start your day
1) Nationwide, mortgage interest rates are to be increased for the third time | Lenders are struggling to keep up with rising wholesale borrowing costs
2) Wall Street banker accidentally sent sextape to colleague while working from home | Adam Dell paid several million dollars to the woman who received the recording
3) ECB hikes interest rates to highest level in 22 years | The European Central Bank hiked interest rates to their highest level since 2001, triggering a rise in borrowing costs as President Christine Lagarde warned that stubborn inflation meant further rate hikes
4) Imperialism is taboo in Britain – but it is making an extraordinary comeback in Europe | The captains of EU doctrine are aggressively challenging the ideological tenets of the left
5) Third Revolut investor lowers company’s value after accounting problems | Even more trouble for the fintech as it struggles to get a banking license
What happened overnight?
Asian equities rose to a four-month high as US economic data raised expectations that the Federal Reserve is nearing the end of its rate hike campaign.
However, the yen fell after the Bank of Japan maintained its ultra-loose monetary policy.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific stocks outside of Japan rose 0.75 percentage points and is on track for a weekly gain of 2.8 percentage points, its best weekly performance since January.
The Bank of Japan rounded off a tough week for the central bank, sticking to its promise to “patiently” implement massive stimulus measures to ensure Japan sustains its 2 percent inflation target while raising wages.
As widely expected, the BOJ maintained its short-term interest rate target of -0.1% and a 0% cap on the 10-year bond yield set under its Yield Curve Control (YCC) policy.
China’s benchmark CSI 300 index rose 0.5 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.8 percent.
Wall Street stocks rallied Thursday in a sign that the stock market is expecting the Federal Reserve’s rate-hiking campaign to end soon.
All three major indices rose more than 1 percentage point, a day after the Fed left rates unchanged but signaled it expects more hikes in 2023.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.3 percent to 34,408.06.
The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 1.2 percentage points to 4,425.84, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index also rose 1.2 percentage points to 13,782.82.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield fell 8 basis points to 3.718 percent from 3.798 percent late Wednesday.
The two-year bond recently lost 6.5 basis points and reached a yield of 4.6418 percent.