London/Sydney — World stocks edged higher on Friday as hopes of economic recovery ahead helped offset the blow dealt by news that the US treasury is ending emergency loan programmes.
The dollar edged up and the 10-year US treasury yield slipped to the lowest in 10 days at 0.818%, before marginally recovering in later trading. Though the programmes were not used extensively, Fed officials felt their presence reassured financial markets and investors that credit would remain available to help businesses, local agencies and even non-profits through the pandemic downturn.
Investor sentiment was also hit by data that showed Covid-19 hospitalisations across the US jumped by nearly 50% in the last two weeks, threatening the recovery of the world’s largest economy as cities and states began to impose lockdowns. In Europe, investors clung to signs of progress on coronavirus vaccines. The EU could pay more than $10bn to secure hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine candidates being developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and CureVac, an EU official involved in the talks said.