Pedestrians walk past a public screen displaying the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the Hang Seng Index figures in Shanghai, China. Picture: BLOOMBERG/QILAI SHEN
The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 50 countries, was up 0.4% at 8.03am GMT, recovering after having its biggest weekly fall since June last week. Europe's Stoxx 600 was up 0.3%. “Following the corrections that we have seen over the last week, it's really a bounceback,” said Marco Willner, head of investment strategy at NNIP.
Dallas Federal Reserve president Robert Kaplan, among the US central bank's most forceful supporters for starting to reduce support for the economy, said on Friday he may need to adjust that view if the Delta variant of the coronavirus slows economic growth materially. Activity in Germany's manufacturing and services sectors expanded in August, according to PMI surveys, though the pace of growth fell slightly.