Sunday 8 July 2012

European Stock Futures Little Changed; Asian Shares Fall


European stock-index futures were little changed as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao signaled further policy easing for the world’s second-biggest economy while Japanese machinery orders fell the most in seven years. U.S. futures and Asian shares fell.

Futures on the Euro Stoxx 50 Index expiring in September fell 0.1 percent to 2,228 at 7:07 a.m. in London, while contracts on the U.K.’s FTSE 100 Index rose 0.1 percent. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures slipped 0.3 percent and the MSCI Asia Pacific Index slid 1.5 percent.
Downward pressure on the Chinese economy is still “relatively large” and the government will intensify fine- tuning of policies even as measures taken since April are helping stabilize a slowdown, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Wen as saying yesterday.
Japanese machinery orders, an indicator of capital spending, fell 14.8 percent in May from the previous month, the Cabinet Office said, the biggest drop since at least 2005. Economists expected a 2.6 percent decline.
In the U.S., Alcoa Inc., the biggest American aluminum producer, is scheduled to unofficially start the second-quarter earnings season when it releases results after the close of trading today.
To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Levring in Copenhagen at plevring1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Rummer at arummer@bloomberg.net
Bloomberg News | By Peter Levring - Jul 9, 2012 10:45 AM GMT+0400