Wall Street was set to open higher and world stocks edged towards recent record highs on Wednesday, with investor hopes of a strong economic recovery next year also pushing the safe-haven dollar to its lowest since April 2018.
Europe’s main markets were heading for a sixth straight session of gains as AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s coronavirus vaccine became the second to be approved by Britain, helping the FTSE 100 add 0.1%, though it stuck below the previous day’s nine-month highs.
S&P 500 futures rose 0.34% after U.S. stocks had retreated from an intraday record high on Tuesday.
MSCI’s world stocks index rose 0.25% to within touching distance of the record highs it had set on Tuesday.
The index is up 14% this year and nearly 70% from its March lows, boosted by trillions of dollars in global economic stimulus and expectations that coronavirus vaccines will re-open locked-down economies.
MSCI’s gauge of Asia-Pacific shares excluding Japan rose 1.4% to a record high, led by gains in Chinese shares and bringing its gains this year to 19%.
Japan’s Nikkei share average lost 0.45%, however, on its last trading day of 2020 after jumping to a 30-year high on Tuesday.
