London — The dollar stirred and equities recoiled on Thursday after a divided US Federal Reserve dented stimulus hopes, TikTok’s tug-of-war clobbered tech stocks, and dire European car sales underscored coronavirus troubles.
The downtrodden dollar rebounded across the board, giving it its best daily rise in more than a week against a basket of other top currencies and punting the euro back under $1.18. Banks, carmakers and miners were the biggest sectoral fallers though, all dropping as much as 2%. Volkswagen, Renault and PSA Group fell between 2.5% and 3% after industry data showed European car sales fell by 17.6% in August.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares excluding Japan had lost 1% overnight after five straight days of gains while Japan’s Nikkei shed 0.6%. New economic projections released with the policy statement showed most policymakers see interest rates on hold to at least 2023, with inflation not breaching 2% over that period.