Market update: Investors continue to fret about US and Japan QE – 12.06.2013

Source: Henderson Global Investors

US stocks ended Tuesday in the red (S&P 500 -1.0%, Dow Jones -0.8%, Nasdaq -1.1%) as investors continued to worry about the winding down of US quantitative easing and the lack of new policy measures from Japan. 10-year US Treasuries yields soared to 2.29% at one point, before falling back to 2.185% at the end of the day. Emerging markets had another challenging day yesterday with Indonesia (-1.4%), Thailand (-0.9%) and Korea (-0.5%) all trading lower. General weakness across commodities including copper and gold also added to weakness in the region.

Having lost 1.5% yesterday the Nikkei ended Wednesday down 0.2% while the yen rose further against the US dollar. In Europe, the hearing on the legality of the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme continues in Germany’s Constitutional Court. This morning, Vodafone has confirmed it is looking at a possible takeover of German television, mobile and broadband group Kabel Deutschland; Vodafone would have to offer at least €6.34bn for the company, based on the average three-month share price. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 is up 0.1% while the FTSE 100 is 0.2% lower at the time of writing.