By Caroline Valetkevitch and Amanda Cooper, Reuters
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on April 10, 2025. Despite US President Donald Trump's declared 90-day tariff pause for many countries, uncertainty remains in global trade. Photo: SPENCER PLATT / Getty Images via AFP
- US stocks slightly higher, but trading is choppy
- Gold goes above $3,200 per ounce to another record high
- US bond yields rise while euro zone bond yields ease
Major stock indexes edged up in volatile trading, the US dollar eased and gold prices hit another record high on Friday (local time) as China increased its tariffs on US imports and a brutal week of market swings drew to a close.
The US bond selloff resumed, with 10-year Treasury prices easing and yields - which move inversely to prices - on track for their biggest weekly increase in more than 43 years as investors remained nervous about further bond market liquidations.
Investors digested a report showing that US consumer sentiment deteriorated sharply in April and another showing US monthly producer prices unexpectedly fell in March.
They also looked at results from some big Wall Street banks, which kicked off the quarterly US reporting period. JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo were among the reports, which mostly showed major US banks beat forecasts for the first quarter.
Markets have been rocked by the global trade war and worries about recession since US President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs late on 2 April.
On Friday, China hit back, hiking its tariffs on US goods to 125 percent, from 84 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 67.71 points, or 0.14 percent, to 39,647.37, the S&P 500 rose 14.71 points, or 0.28 percent, to 5,282.76 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 75.17 points, or 0.44 percent, to 16,458.73.
Technology led S&P 500 sector gains.
"A lot of de-risking has happened in the (tech) space and investors don't want to take too much risk of being too underweight in those areas," said Thomas Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments.
MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe fell 1.56 points, or 0.20 percent, to 777.71. The pan-European STOXX 600 index fell 0.13 percent.
In the Treasury market, analysts said hedge funds and other asset managers offloaded bonds this week after getting margin calls and posting sharp losses from market volatility.
Strong auctions of 10-year and 30-year debt on Wednesday and Thursday helped stabilise the market somewhat, but many investors remain wary of buying bonds until there is further improvement in liquidity.
The yield on benchmark US 10-year notes rose 14.3 basis points to 4.535 percent.
Earlier, euro zone bond yields eased, and the premium that holders of Treasuries demand to hold US debt rather than German Bunds rose by the most in a week since the 1990s.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, fell 0.41 percent to 100.11, with the euro up 1.07 percent at $1.1317.
Against the Japanese yen, the dollar weakened 0.61 percent to 143.61.
Against the Swiss franc, the dollar weakened 0.87 percent to 0.816.
Spot gold was up 1.8 percent at $3,230.75 an ounce, after hitting a record high of $3,237.56 earlier in the session. Bullion is up over 6 percent this week.
- Reuters
