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The Stoxx Europe 600 Index advanced 0.4 percent by 9:34 a.m. in London as Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures added 0.1 percent after the gauge closed at a record. The yen declined after the Yomiuri newspaper said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may call a snap election if he scraps a planned sales-tax increase. Russia’s currency slid 1.2 percent against the dollar. Trading on Shanghai’s bourse surged to a record, more than double the amount on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, before the start of an exchange link with Hong Kong next week.
Vodafone gained the most in more than a year after reporting a smaller decline in service revenue than analysts estimated. Abe said today in Beijing that nothing has been decided about the timing of an election. U.S. equity indexes have risen to records amid signs the economy is weathering a global slowdown and the end of the Federal Reserve’s bond purchases.
“Company earnings are running reasonably well and markets have seen them, at least on the margin, as reassuring,” Raimund Saxinger, who oversees $22 billion as a fund manager at Frankfurt-Trust Investment GmbH, said in a phone interview. “There is some underlying strength in the global economy and we are not on the brink of recession or deflation.”
Vodafone Climbs
Three shares gained for every two that declined in the Stoxx 600. Vodafone climbed 5.3 percent.All but three of the 33 industry groups on the Topix index advanced today as Japan’s broadest measure closed 1.1 percent higher. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average jumped 2.1 percent.
With more than two-thirds of the public against the planned tax increase, winning a snap election may secure Abe’s position as prime minister with a large majority while the opposition is divided.
The risk for Abe is that, without other sources of revenue, Japan’s debt burden -- the world’s biggest -- will continue to expand. The yen slipped to the weakest intraday level since Nov. 1, 2007.
Russia’s currency, which is down 28 percent this year versus the dollar, surged yesterday after the country’s central bank said it will limit the amount of rubles available for selling.
Russia Repos
The first test of how far the Bank of Russia will take this policy will come today at an auction for short-term loans known as repos. At the last offering of week-long repurchase agreements on Oct. 31, lenders borrowed 2.85 trillion rubles ($62 billion), up from a nine-month low of 1.83 trillion on Sept. 30.The South Korean won resumed declines, weakening for the eighth time in nine days. The currency retreated to 1,091.7 per dollar, after gaining 0.8 percent yesterday. The Kospi index added 0.2 percent in Seoul.
Hyundai Motor Co. jumped as much as 7.2 percent, the most since Oct. 23, as South Korea’s largest carmaker announced a share buyback.
The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.2 percent. More than 330 billion yuan ($54 billion) of shares in the gauge changed hands today, the most since Bloomberg began compiling the data in 2005. That compares with about $22 billion on the NYSE yesterday.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA), the Chinese e-commerce giant that debuted in New York this year, jumped 4 percent to a record $119.15 yesterday. With China celebrating Singles Day today -- a twist on Valentines Day -- the company is aiming to exceed the amount of transactions it recorded on Nov. 11 last year, when more than $1 billion of goods were sold via its platform in the first 20 minutes of the day, according to the Hangzhou, China-based company’s website.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3 percent to a record 2,038.26 in the U.S., bringing its rebound from a six-month low reached Oct. 15 to 9.4 percent. The index rose 0.7 percent last week for a third straight weekly gain. The Dow (INDU) added 0.2 percent to an all-time high of 17,613.74 yesterday.
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