After weeks of U.S. stocks seeing wild ups and downs, you could hardly blame the world’s cautious reaction at this point. Who wants a case of financial whiplash?
Wall Street was lurching this week as though getting over overindulgence on spiked eggnog. A string of losses culminated in the biggest Christmas Eve bust on record, according to MarketWatch, fueled by general anxiety, China trade tensions, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s Twitter remark that raised questions about bank liquidity.
Next came the Wednesday rally that ultimately gave Wall Street its best day in 10 years.
Thursday was a second day of gains, as United Press International reported, but only after the Dow being down 611 points earlier in the day. The midday drop came on the news that Donald Trump might ban doing business with U.S. companies that used equipment from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE.
Today, global markets have been sipping coffee and moving with care, worried about further wild swings, writes AP. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC were both up 0.7% in early trading. London’s FTSE saw a 0.1% gain. The Shanghai Composite Index was ahead 0.4% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, up 0.1%. The Nikkei in Japan was the odd market out, dropping 0.3%.