New | Dow Jones index poised to breach 20,000 points, setting milestone
US markets slip marginally as trading starts, but stay within touching distance of the psychologically important level
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was poised within striking distance of the 20,000-point milestone as trading got under way in the US on Wednesday.
Strong US job figures and the US Federal Reserve’s foreshadowing of three rate increases in 2017 have attracted capital back to American equities, pushing the benchmark index to within a hair’s breadth of the as yet unbreached level.
Five minutes after trading began, the Dow Jones was down 0.01 per cent at 19,972.26 from yesterday’s record-high close of 19,974.62. Meanwhile, the S&P500 slipped 0.02 per cent to 2,270.28, still close to its all-time high set a week earlier, and the Nasdaq was down 0.01 per cent at 5,483.35, having advanced 0.49 per cent on Tuesday.
Asian equity markets were mixed ahead of trading in US markets, with indexes declining in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Thailand and Indonesia. The Hang Seng Index rose 0.4 per cent, while the H-Shares Index rose 0.5 per cent, and the CSI300 Index in China rose 0.9 per cent.
European markets were mixed in early trading before the Dow’s record, with the FTSE100 index down by as much as 0.3 per cent, while the CAC index in France was down 0.4 per cent and Germany’s DAX was up by as much as 0.1 per cent.
“The market expects the US economy to enter a new era of expansion under the new president,” said
Ben Kwong Man-bun, director of KGI Asia. “Trump’s economic policies on the campaign trail had promised to boost corporate earnings and introduce inflation to drive economic growth. This has supported the US stock market and the US dollar.”