A man wearing a protective face mask talks on his cellphone in front of a screen showing the Nikkei index outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan. Picture: REUTERS/ATHIT PERAWONGMETHA
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added 0.1%, having already climbed for four sessions to be up over 10% so far in 2021. Futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were both steady, having hit historic highs on Wednesday. Eurostoxx 50 futures and FTSE futures barely budged. Notably, Powell emphasised that once pandemic effects were stripped out, unemployment was nearer 10% than the reported 6.3% and thus a long way from full employment.
“Historical experience provides strong justification to only act against undesired inflationary pressures once they have been seen, after full employment has been achieved,” he said. That in turn weighed on the US dollar, which slipped to 90.395 on a basket of currencies and away from a 10-week top of 91.600 touched late last week.