Stock market today: Global benchmarks are trading mixed as investors focus on profits

TOKYO – World stocks traded mixed on Thursday as investors awaited a flurry of global earnings reports, including updates from U.S. technology companies known as the “Magnificent Seven.”

France’s CAC 40 lost 0.3% in early trading to 8,067.62, while Germany’s DAX fell 0.4% to 18,008.84. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.7% to 8,098.24. US stocks were expected to fall, with Dow futures falling 0.3% to 38,577.00. YOU&P500 futures fell 0.5% to 5,081.25.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 2.2% to 37,628.48. South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.8% to 2,628.62. But Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.5% to 17,284.54, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.3% to 3,052.90.

Markets were closed in Australia due to a national holiday, Anzac Day.

Attention also turns to the Bank of Japan, whose two-day monetary policy meeting began Thursday.

“For the record, ahead of tomorrow’s policy decision, the exceptional weakness of the Japanese yen is the elephant in the BOJ’s room agitated,” Tan Jing Yi of Mizuho Bank said in a commentary.

In currency trading, the US dollar rose to 155.64 Japanese yen from 155.31 yen. The euro was priced at $1.0730, up from $1.0697.

The yen has been trading lately at 155 yen levels, its lowest level in 34 years. This helps Japanese exporters by increasing the value of their overseas earnings, but it also increases the price of imports.

Speculation has grown. Japan may intervene to support the yen. But opinions are divided on whether and when that might happen.

Chris Turner, global head of research at ING Economics, said the dollar trading above 155 yen was at a level that many expected would trigger market intervention, but the conditions were not sufficient.

“Sufficiency has to come from market conditions and it could be argued that we’re not there yet,” Turner said, pointing to recent volatility in trading.

Tesla is the first of the group of stocks called the Magnificent Seven to release earnings for early 2024. These stocks generated most of the U.S. stock market’s gain last year and will need to perform to justify their high prices.

The hope is that earnings growth will spread beyond the Magnificent Seven and into other types of companies, largely due to the remarkable strength of the U.S. economy. They will likely need to generate larger profits if they want their share prices to rise. This is because they are unlikely to get much help from the other lever that can drive up share prices: interest rates.

In energy trading Thursday morning, U.S. benchmark crude rose 38 cents to $83.19 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 43 cents to $88.45 a barrel.