Global stocks inch to record high; dollar weakens

By Simon Jessop

LONDON (Reuters) – Global stocks rose for the seventh straight day to reach a record high on Tuesday, while bitcoin hit a fresh peak of $48,000, extending gains after an endorsement from Tesla Inc.

Robust corporate earnings, monetary and fiscal support from policymakers and prospects that pandemic vaccines could hasten a return to normal in the United States and other countries have all bolstered risk sentiment in recent days.

A record high close for Wall Street overnight gave Asian stocks the confidence to push on further, with MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan up 0.3%, led by Chinese blue chips, up 2.2%.

That helped The MSCI All-Country World Index edge up 0.1% to its own record high, although early moves in Europe’s top indexes suggested further gains may be tougher to find, with Britain’s FTSE 100 flat on the day.

Futures for the S&P 500 were equally undecided, suggesting a quiet start to the U.S. trading day, although Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, said he remained positive on the outlook.

“With corporate earnings strong and the policy backdrop supportive, we believe the US bull market is on a solid footing,” he said.

In bond markets, euro zone core bond yields were flat, edging off the previous session’s highs. Italy’s borrowing costs were near recent lows as Mario Draghi looked to gather support to form a new government.

Germany’s 10-year bond yield was flat on the day at -0.444%, after hitting five-month highs on Monday at -0.412%.

In keeping with the risk-on sentiment, oil also hit 13-month highs, helped by rising optimism about a return in fuel demand, with Brent crude up 0.8%.

“There is a sense that the glut of oil supply is disappearing more rapidly than anybody thought possible,” said Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. “There seems to be a paradigm shift in the market.”

But concern remained over the pace of vaccination, the efficacy of the vaccines against new strains of the COVID-19 virus and the damage being done to economies, including the impact on the dollar of a planned $1.9 trillion stimulus package.

That suite of negativity helped weigh further on the dollar. Against a basket of other currencies, it was down 0.2% in early deals – bolstering gold, a traditional safe haven against rising inflation, which rose 0.5%.

The euro, meanwhile, rose 0.2% to $1.20775, up from a two-month low of $1.9520 touched Friday. The pound was up around 0.3% at $1.3774.

In more volatile cryptocurrency markets, bitcoin pushed on from the prior day’s 20% rally to hit a high of $48,216.09, before edging off its highs to trade around $47,000.

Still underpinning the gains was a surprise announcement from Tesla Inc on Monday that it had invested around $1.5 billion in the virtual currency and expects to accept it as payment for its cars in the future.

(Additional reporting by Saikat Chatterjee and Sara Rossi; editing by Larry King)