BLBG:Yen Gains as G-20 Meets; Euro, U.S. Index Futures Drop
The yen strengthened for a fourth day against the dollar and the euro weakened as Group of 20 finance chiefs and central bankers met in Moscow. U.S. equity- index futures pared declines.
Japan’s currency gained 0.3 percent versus the dollar at 6:10 a.m. in New York and the euro declined 0.3 percent to $1.3327. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures slid 0.2 percent and the Stoxx Europe 600 Index slipped 0.1 percent. Yields on Germany’s 10-year bunds fell for a second day, dropping three basis points to 1.61 percent. Zinc advanced after a meteorite damaged a warehouse in Russia.
“What we’re seeing right now is a bit of a fright with the G-20 meeting happening in Moscow,” said Sonja Marten, a currency strategist at DZ Bank AG in Frankfurt. “The trend is going to resume and dollar-yen is going to go back up quite possibly next week once the G-20 is behind us.”
Japan’s ruling party lawmaker Kozo Yamamoto said that a race to devalue currencies would spur global growth and a rate of 95 yen to 100 yen per dollar would be appropriate. European Central Bank council member Jens Weidmann said an appreciating euro alone won’t trigger a cut in interest rates. Reports today will probably show U.S. industrial output and consumer confidence increased while manufacturing in the New York region contracted for a seventh month, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
Yen Gains
The yen advanced against 14 of its 16 major counterparts today as investors speculated who may be chosen to lead the Bank of Japan to carry out Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push for more monetary stimulus. The Japanese currency has lost more than 6 percent this year against the dollar.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov sought specific language opposing exchange-rate interference in the communique G-20 finance chiefs will issue tomorrow after their two-day meeting.
“With countries racing to devalue their currencies in an effort to stir up a bit of competitiveness in their domestic economies, the issue of currency wars is set to dominate” the G-20 meeting, Jonathan Sudaria, a trader at Capital Spreads in London, wrote in an e-mail.
Sweden’s krona slid against all its major counterparts, weakening 0.4 percent versus the dollar.
Aker Tumbles
The Stoxx 600 was little changed, heading for its first weekly gain this month. Aker Solutions ASA, the oil-services provider controlled by billionaire Kjell Inge Roekke, plummeted 11 percent in Oslo after reporting weaker-than-expected fourth- quarter margins at most of its units. PPR SA climbed 7.1 percent, the biggest jump in six months, as the French owner of Gucci reported profit that beat estimates and predicted growth in 2013.
The decline in S&P 500 futures indicated the U.S. gauge will retreat from the highest level since October 2007. Herbalife Ltd. surged 25 percent in early New York trading as billionaire investor Carl Icahn reported a 13 percent holding in the nutrition-supplements company.
A report at 9:15 a.m. New York time may show U.S. industrial production climbed 0.2 percent in January after a 0.3 percent gain the previous month, according to the median of 81 estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment for February rose to 74.8 from 73.8 at the end of January, a separate survey showed.
Zinc climbed 0.3 percent. A wall was destroyed in a warehouse of the metal concentrate, said Evgeny Ponomarev, a spokesman for Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant. Chelyabinsk Zinc is a unit of billionaire Iskandar Makhmudov’s Ural Mining & Metallurgical Co.
Wheat advanced 0.8 percent after U.S. export sales climbed.
U.S. natural gas futures dipped 0.4 percent in electronic trading in New York. Gas tumbled 4.3 percent yesterday to a five-week low of $3.163 per million British thermal units after a government report showed U.S. stockpiles fell by less than forecast last week, with the end of the winter period in sight.
To contact the reporters on this story: Stephen Kirkland in London at skirkland@bloomberg.net; Jonathan Burgos in Singapore at jburgos4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Justin Carrigan at jcarrigan@bloomberg.net
