BLBG:Stocks Advance as U.S. Futures Gain After Ratings Affirmed; Copper Gains
Stocks and U.S. equity futures pared gains as the finance spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political party said there’s no alternative to the current policy in fighting the euro region’s financial crisis.
The Stoxx Europe 600 Index advanced 0.1 percent at 9:19 a.m. in London, after earlier climbing 1 percent. Standard & Poor’s 500 futures added 0.1 percent, after earlier gaining 0.6 percent. German 10-year bonds erased declines. Copper rallied 1.8 percent and gold rebounded from a one-month low.
“We haven’t any new bazooka to pull out of the bag,” Michael Meister, finance spokesman for Merkel’s Christian Democratic party, said in a telephone interview today.
About $3.3 trillion has been wiped off global equity values this month. Stocks (MXWD) advanced earlier after Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service kept the U.S.’s credit rating unchanged after Congress’s special debt-reduction committee failed to reach an agreement, setting the stage for $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts.
Data today may show euro-area consumer confidence fell to a two-year low, while the World Bank said developing East Asia will grow at a slower pace next year.
“When you look at valuation measures for global equities, they’re all running well below historical averages,” Shane Oliver, the Sydney-based head of investment strategy at AMP Capital Investors Ltd., said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “Very tough economic conditions are already priced in, probably something approaching a global recession.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Kirkland in London at skirkland@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: at swallace6@bloomberg.net
