By Amanda Cooper and Rae Wee
LONDON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Global stocks eased on Thursday, halting a rally sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s mammoth spending plans for artificial intelligence infrastructure as some of that excitement fizzled out, though Chinese shares fared better on Beijing’s support.
In Europe, the STOXX 600, which hit a record high on Wednesday, was down 0.1%, under pressure from a drop in technology shares, which had soared the previous day after Trump announced a $500 billion private-sector AI infrastructure investment plan.
The joint venture, which involves Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank initially turbo-charged a rally in global stock markets, which drew further support from upbeat earnings.
Without any more detail on Trump’s plans for tariffs, the momentum faded and the dollar hovered around two-week lows, while stocks on Wall Street hit a record high the previous day.
“Clearly, the path of least resistance continues to lead to the upside in the equity space, with participants ably shrugging off tariff-related uncertainties for now,” said Michael Brown, senior research strategist at Pepperstone.
“That said, next week brings a chunky slate of event risk, including the first FOMC decision of the year, as well as earnings from megacaps…It wouldn’t be too surprising to see some equity longs trimmed into that bonanza.”
U.S. stock index futures were down 0.2-0.5%.
On Asian markets overnight, Chinese stocks rallied by more than 1% at one point in the session, after the government announced plans to channel hundreds of billions of yuan of investment from state-owned insurers into shares, just after Trump said he was proposing to slap a 10% punitive duty on Chinese imports.
The CSI300 blue-chip index gave up some of those gains to end the day up 0.18%.
“The persistent underperformance of China equities is a barometer of the country’s fundamental economic difficulties, along with falling bond yields,” said Alvin Tan, head of Asia FX strategy at RBC Capital Markets.
“They point to the domestic difficulties. And U.S. tariffs will worsen the problem especially with China growing more reliant on net exports to power growth.”
Elsewhere, Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.8%. Shares in SoftBank jumped 5%, with the company having come under the spotlight due to the Stargate AI joint venture.
The Information reported on Wednesday that OpenAI and Japanese conglomerate SoftBank will each commit $19 billion to fund the project.
TARIFF THREATS
Action in the currency markets was largely subdued on Thursday after a volatile few sessions since Trump’s return to the White House, owing to his plans around tariffs.
