Wall Street indexes edge higher
Benchmark 10-year yields dip
Crude prices falls
US dollar weakens
Safe-haven gold slips
(Updates prices throughout with U.S. markets close, oil settlement)
Global stocks edged higher while U.S. Treasury yields dipped on Tuesday as markets weighed data showing a persistently tight labor market, and prospects of interest rate cuts after comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
The Fed needs more data before cutting rates to ensure recent weaker inflation readings properly reflect underlying price pressures, Powell told a conference in Portugal on Tuesday.
The Labor Department reported on Tuesday that job openings, a measure of labor demand, rose by 221,000 to 8.140 million on the last day of May, the lowest level since February 2021 and slightly ahead of Wall Street expectations.
The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes US10YT=RR fell 4.9 basis points to 4.43%.
"Listening to some of his comments, it seems he's laying the groundwork for cuts maybe in September, that's where the market thinks they're going to start," said James St. Aubin, chief investment officer at Sierra Mutual Funds in Santa Monica, California.
"We saw a little bit of an increase in job openings, so that seems to suggest that the labor market is hanging in there. Bond yields were lower, I think partly because of what Powell was talking about, you know seeming more of a dovish tone."
MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD00000PUS rose 0.40% to 806.95. In Europe, the STOXX 600 .STOXX index fell 0.42% as the relief rally in French shares following the first round of parliamentary elections faded.
On Wall Street, all major indexes finished higher after a choppy session with gains in consumer discretionary, financials, communication services and consumer staples stocks, while healthcare and energy equities were the biggest drags.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 0.41% to 39,331.85, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 0.62% at 5,509.01 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC advanced 0.84% to 18,028.76.
Crude prices fell as fears of supply disruptions caused by Hurricane Beryl faded.
Brent LCOc1 crude futures settled down 0.42% at $86.24 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 settled at $82.81 a barrel, down 0.68%.
The dollar index =USD , which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, fell 0.15% to 105.68. The euro EUR= was down 0.06% at $1.0744.
Against the Japanese yen JPY=EBS , the dollar weakened 0.01% at 161.44. It hit 161.745 on Tuesday, the strongest in nearly 38 years, driven mainly by a wide gap in U.S.-Japanese interest rates.
Gold prices slipped. Spot gold XAU= lost 0.07% at $2,330.03 an ounce, while U.S. gold futures GCc1 fell 0.08% to $2,325.80 an ounce. ($1 = 161.5900 yen)
((To read Reuters Markets and Finance news, click on https://www.reuters.com/finance/markets))
