BEIJING: Major global stock markets were mostly lower Tuesday after Wall Street retreated from record highs.
London and Frankfurt opened lower, while Shanghai and Tokyo also declined. Hong Kong and Seoul advanced.
Wall Street futures gained a day after the benchmark S&P 500 index lost 0.5 percent on declines for tech, bank and energy stocks.
Investor optimism has been boosted by higher corporate profits, US hiring and consumer confidence. Still, traders are uneasy about a rise in inflation and interest rates and renewed coronavirus infections that prompted some governments to reimpose anti-disease controls.
“Wall Street could be in for a few choppy trading weeks as more of the same strong earnings beats becomes the theme,” said Edward Moya of Oanda in a report.
In early trading, the FTSE 100 in London declined 0.3 percent to 6,982.77 and the DAX in Frankfurt lost 0.2 percent to 15,335.68. The CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.6 percent to 6,256.90. On Wall Street, futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up less than 0.1 percent.
On Monday, the Dow lost 0.4 percent. Both the S&P 500 and the Dow hit highs on Friday.
Capital One lost 0.9 percent and Valero Energy slid 2.3 percent.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite slid 1 percent. Chipmaker Intel fell 1.7 percent.
In Asia, the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.1 percent to 3,472.94 while the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo tumbled 2 percent to 29,100.38. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong gained 0.1 percent to 29,135.73.
The Kospi in Seoul rose 0.7 percent to 3,220.70 while the S&P-ASX 200 in Sydney sank 0.7 percent to 7,017.80.
India’s Sensex was up less than 0.1 percent at 47,978.05. New Zealand, Singapore and Jakarta declined while Bangkok advanced.
This week, 81 of the 500 members of the S&P 500 index are due to report earnings, as are 10 of the 30 members of the Dow, including Johnson & Johnson, Verizon Communications and Intel. On average, analysts expect quarterly profits across the S&P 500 to be up 24 percent from a year earlier, according to FactSet. In energy markets, benchmark US crude rose 82 cents to $64.25 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, used to price international oils, gained 90 cents to $67.95 per barrel in London.
The dollar advanced to 108.40 yen from Monday’s 108.11 yen. The euro gained to $1.2070 from $1.2039.
