(Bloomberg) — Asian stock markets traded within a tight trade Friday as investors anxiously awaited Donald Trump’s next trade war salvo, following a busy week of central bank meetings that further frayed nerves.
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Shares in Hong Kong and South Korea fell in early trading, while Japan’s stock market rose and mainland China was slightly up. US futures edged higher after the S&P 500 closed lower on Thursday, a sign of investor caution.
The sluggish moves stalled a nascent rebound in global stocks earlier in the week, underscoring investor jitters in the run-up to an increase in US tariffs. Earlier this week, President Trump said both broad reciprocal tariffs and certain additional sector-specific tariffs would come into force on April 2.
In theory, investors should have been able to get a clear sense of direction this week, with policy meetings by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England all providing signals. But these central banks pointed to the tariffs as obscuring the outlook, exacerbating a sense among investors that the world is flying blind into April 2.
“You’ve seen President Trump’s policies inject the market with a wave of uncertainty that we’ve not seen for many years,” said Todd Jablonski, global head of multi-asset and quantitative investments at Principal Asset Management, on Bloomberg Television. The firm has dialed back risk in multi-asset portfolios, he said.
The European Union this week delayed a proposed tariff on American whiskey. The trading bloc is ready to talk to Trump before making further decisions on retaliatory tariffs, Ireland’s deputy prime minister said.
Investors also had earnings and economic data to digest, offering more mixed signals for the market. Existing home sales in the US topped estimates, while initial jobless claims, a measure of unemployment, were in line with expectations in a sign of a healthy labor market.
But in late hours, FedEx Corp. — an economic barometer — sank after cutting its profit outlook given higher costs and signs of weakening demand. Nike Inc. also cited the tariffs and geopolitics tensions as factors that will impact its earnings.
US-listed shares of PDD Holdings Inc. rose after earnings beat expectations, although revenue came below estimates. The company, which runs the Temu online marketplace, acknowledged challenges from growing global uncertainty.
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