BANGKOK (AP) — Asian shares were mixed Wednesday after a day of listless trading on Wall Street in the absence of market-moving data.
China reported its exports fell 7.5% from a year earlier in May and imports were down 4.5%, adding to signs of a slowing of its economic recovery following the lifting in December of anti-virus controls that disrupted travel and commerce.
The decline in exports was the first year-on-year drop in in three months, with export volumes falling below their levels at the start of the year. “And with the worst yet to come for many developed economies, we think exports will decline further before bottoming out later this year,” Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said in a commentary.
The Shanghai Composite index
SHCOMP,
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index
NIK,
On Tuesday, the S&P 500
SPX,
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
Gitlab
GTLB,
Investors are watching to see which will happen first: a recession or inflation falling enough to get the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates, which have climbed so high they’ve hurt various parts of the economy.
Next week, the U.S. government will publish its latest monthly updates on inflation, and the Federal Reserve will meet on interest-rate policy. The bet on Wall Street is that the Fed may hold off on hiking rates, which would be the first time that’s happened in more than a year, but could resume raising rates in July.
Some of Tuesday’s strongest action was in the cryptocurrency world after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Coinbase with operating its trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker and clearing agency.
Shares of its parent, Coinbase Global
COIN,
Coinbase criticized the SEC’s approach to crypto, saying “the solution is legislation that allows fair rules for the road to be developed transparently and applied equally, not litigation.”
Opinion: Coinbase and Binance crackdown hurts the U.S. more than it does bitcoin and other crypto
A day earlier, the SEC filed 13 charges against another huge crypto trading platform, Binance, and its founder. Binance said it had been in discussions to reach a negotiated settlement to resolve the SEC’s investigations.
The frenzy around AI has helped a handful of stocks soar to immense gains this year, including Nvidia’s
NVDA,
Even though the S&P 500 is nearing a bull market, almost as many stocks within it are down this year as up as worries remain about falling corporate profits, still-high inflation and much higher interest rates than a year ago.
In other trading Wednesday, a U.S. crude oil
CL.1,
Both were close to $120 a year ago but have fallen amid worries about a strapped global economy’s need for fuel.
The U.S. dollar
DXY,