The SEC said on Wednesday it approved 11 ETF applications, including from BlackRock, Ark Investments/21Shares, Fidelity, Invesco and VanEck. Three, including BlackRock’s, were trading early Thursday, with more expected to begin later in the day.
Industry focus now turns to the second largest cryptocurrency ether, which underpins the ethereum blockchain network. Ether was up more than 4% on Thursday. BlackRock filed for a spot ethereum ETF in November 2023.
Back in stock markets, Japan’s Nikkei marched on – topping 35,000 points for the first time since 1990.
Buoyed by renewed yen weakness this year, amid hopes that soft inflation and wage data and the recent earthquake in the country would stay the Bank of Japan’s hand in tightening policy early, the Nikkei has outperformed the MSCI all-country index by 2% so far in 2024 and by 15% over 12 months.
It’s now less than 10% from record highs hit at the height of the Japanese property bubble in 1990.
Elsewhere, markets were braced for the tense weekend elections in Taiwan and the start of the U.S. earnings season with many of the big banks reporting on Friday.
In Europe, bond yields fell back after Wednesday’s pop higher on relatively hawkish comments from European Central Bank board member Isabel Schnabel – who said it was too early to talk about rate cuts.
British retailer Marks & Spencer was the biggest loser on the STOXX 600, dropping 4.9% after its uncertain outlook sparked profit-taking.
Job cuts at U.S. Big Tech companies caught the attention.
Alphabet’s Google said it was laying off hundreds of employees across multiple teams, with Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman also leaving the company, as the tech giant continues to cut costs.
Amazon.com, meantime, said it would lay off several hundred employees in its streaming and studio operations. .
