European stocks closed slightly lower on Monday, with the Stoxx 600 index down 0.1%. Germany’s DAX was flat while the U.K.’s FTSE 100 and France’s CAC 40 fell by 0.06% and 0.2%, respectively. Despite this, U.S. stocks opened higher, led by gains in Nvidia, as Wall Street awaited a key artificial intelligence conference.
Markets will be looking past what the Federal Reserve does at its meeting this week and thinking more about what the future holds, according to Chris Larkin, the managing director of trading and investing at ETrade from Morgan Stanley. Larkin expects that “the market will need to like what it sees in the Fed’s statement on Wednesday, and get confirmation from (Fed Chair) Jerome Powell that two months of sticky inflation numbers won’t derail the Fed’s game plan.”
The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank look poised to make “major progress” in cutting interest rates this year, according to the central bank of central banks. Agustín Carstens, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, told CNBC that major central banks had so far made “very impressive advances” in lowering inflation and suggested that they could soon shift toward a looser monetary policy stance.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose more than 2% on Monday, crossing the 39,000 mark for the first time in 10 days as manufacturing and health-care stocks powered the rally. The largest gainer on the index was financial technology company Rakuten Group, which surged 7.38%.
Overall, the global markets are experiencing fluctuations and investors are closely watching central bank decisions and economic indicators for clues on future market movements.
