Stocks edge off record highs as investors gauge outlook

Global shares are mostly lower as investors take a breather after pushing Wall Street to a record high last week on hopes for a COVID-19 vaccine

TOKYO — Global shares turned lower on Monday as investors took a breather after pushing Wall Street to a record high last week on hopes for a COVID-19 vaccine.

U.S. shares were set to decline as Dow futures dropped 0.7%, while S&P 500 futures fell 0.5%. In Europe, France’s CAC 40 fell 0.5% to 5,572, while Germany’s DAX was flat at 13,343. Britain’s FTSE 100 shed 0.2% to 6,352.

Stephen Innes, chief global market strategist at Axi, noted that despite ups and downs investors are looking toward the arrival of vaccines for a gradual return to business as usual.

“Vaccines offer the promise that the major disruptions of the pandemic will fade from the scene in 2021. Economic life will gradually heal; the world will start to move on from all the human suffering that the virus has wrought,” said Innes.

The economic outlook remains mixed, however. While the U.S. and Europe remained hobbled by high rates of infections, China’s economy is growing after it managed to rein in the pandemic. The purchasing managers’ index, or PMI, for China showed its manufacturing sector was growing.

In corporate news, the share price of IHS Markit was up over 6% in premarket trading after S&P Global said it was buying the data provider in a $44 billion all-stock deal.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 dipped 0.8% to finish at 26,433.62. After Tokyo trading ended, Koichiro Miyahara, the head of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, resigned to take responsibility for a massive system glitch that shut down trading last month. The full-day outage on Oct. 1 was the worst ever for the world’s third largest exchange.

South Korea’s Kospi lost 1.6% to 2,591.34. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 1.3% to 6,517.80. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged down 2.0% to 26,361.96, while the Shanghai Composite slipped 0.5% to 3,391.76.

The OPEC nations, led by Saudi Arabia, will be meeting virtually on Monday to decide, once again, how much oil their members should produce as lockdowns related to the coronavirus stifle demand for crude. They’re expected to extend production cuts well into the new year, in an effort to boost volatile oil prices.

The group has to reach agreement among its member countries and the additional members in the group known as OPEC Plus, which includes Russia.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude lost 65 cents to $44.88 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 75 cents to $47.50 a barrel.

The dollar was flat at 104.07 Japanese yen, while the euro cost $1.1986, up from $1.1962.

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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama