Hope dashed: Asian shares fall after Wall Street loses rally

Tokyo, Apr 24 (AP) Asian shares are lower on Friday after an early rally on Wall Street suddenly vanished, the latest example of how fragile the hopes underpinning the stock market’s monthlong recovery are.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 0.8% in morning trading to 19,270.04.

South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.7% to 1,901.09, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.4% to 5,239.50. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.5% to 23,860.76, while the Shanghai Composite stood at 2,823.29, also down 0.5%.

Investor sentiment was back on fragility mode as focus again shifted to the economic damage the world was likely to suffer because of the pandemic, says Prakash Sakpal and Nicholas Mapa, economists at ING.

Investors will continue to be monitoring developments on the COVID-19 front with a setback on clinical testing for a treatment to the virus. Meanwhile, the U.S. passed a fresh round of stimulus while oil prices continued to inch up slightly, they said in a commentary.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 flipped between gains and losses and ended the day down 0.1%. It’s a microcosm of the extreme swings that have gripped markets for months, as investors struggle to set prices for where corporate profits and the economy will be months from now.

The S&P 500 skidded by a third from its record in February until a month ago, and since then has roughly halved its losses on a series of tenuous hopes – of businesses reopening, of government aid to temper the economic pain and of possible treatments for COVID-19.

A report from the Financial Times on Thursday afternoon undercut that third hope. It said a potential antiviral drug flopped in a clinical trial, citing documents published accidentally by the World Health Organisation.

Shares of the company behind the drug, Gilead Sciences, flipped from a 3.3% gain to a 4.3% loss after the report. It also helped flip the market.

The S&P 500 finished at 2,797.80, down 1.51 points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 39.44 points, or 0.2%, to 23,515.26 after losing almost all of a 409-point gain. The Nasdaq composite slipped 0.63 points to 8,494.75.

It should be expected – even as we are optimistic, and we see signs of progress in treatment, testing and vaccines – that there’s going to be some forward and some backsliding, said Nela Richardson, investment strategist at Edward Jones.

She said investors are still encouraged by signs of progress in some places that are seeing fewer new patients and deaths.

The risk is that these fundamentals that we’re seeing now that are dastardly, just terrible and reflective of the economy really going into a sudden stop, last longer than what the markets currently anticipate, she said. That uncertainty will cause volatility, even if the overall trajectory in the market is positive.

Among the dastardly numbers arriving Thursday: Preliminary data on manufacturing and services activity in Europe and the United States came in even weaker than economists expected, as did a report on sales of new US homes.

The headliner, though, was job losses.

Another 4.4 million US workers filed for unemployment benefits last week, raising the total over the last five weeks to 26 million, or roughly one in six US workers.

Analysts said investors may have found some encouragement in a dip from the prior week’s 5.2 million or were looking past the dismal data because they fully expected it.

“Numbers for the short term, when they’re reported, it’s almost like a sigh of relief that they aren’t higher, said Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

US benchmark crude rose 68 cents to 17.18 a barrel. It rose 19.7% to settle at 16.50 a barrel. It has recovered after falling below 12 on Monday, though it remains well below the roughly 60 level it started the year at. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 49 cents to 21.82 a barrel.

The dollar inched up to 107.64 Japanese yen from 107.50 yen on Thursday. The euro inched down to 1.0768 from 1.0777.