Stocks near record highs but dollar drifts as Fed prevaricates on rate hike
London — World stocks held near record highs on Thursday and the dollar eked out minimal gains after the minutes of the latest US Federal Reserve meeting showed policymakers in no hurry to raise interest rates. US and eurozone government bond yields fell or held steady as the minutes did nothing to firm up expectations of a rate rise in March, which remains a slim prospect, with futures pricing in only an 18% chance, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool. The pan-European STOXX 600 stocks index was marginally higher and close to 14-month highs touched on Tuesday. A 4% fall in miner Rio Tinto and a fall of nearly 5% in EasyJet, which were among companies whose shares went ex-dividend, weighed on the index. Miners generally dipped as metals fell. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged up 0.1%, hovering near the highest level since July 2015 that it hit on Wednesday. Earlier, the index lost as much as 0.15%. Japan’s Nikkei closed fractionally lower, as ba...
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