US Fed likely to raise interest rates, and there may be three more hikes
London — Shares were stuck on their worst run since November on Monday, as caution gripped traders in a week in which the Federal Reserve is likely to raise US interest rates and perhaps signal as many as three more hikes lying in store in 2018. A near 1% drop for Europe’s main bourses amid a flurry of gloomy company news and weaker Wall Street futures meant MSCI’s main 47-country world stocks index was down for a fifth day running. Japan’s Nikkei ended down almost 1% in Asia too as its exporters were hit again by broad-based strength in the yen which was up for a third session in the last four in a lively currency market. The dollar made ground on the euro, though, as bond traders saw the gap between 10-year German and US government yields, referred to as the "transatlantic spread", ratchet out to its widest since December 2016. Many analysts had been expecting that spread to narrow as the European Central Bank (ECB) neared the end of its stimulus this year but it hasn’t proved the...
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