By David Randall
NEW YORK, March 24 (Reuters) - Safe-havens assets such as
the dollar and U.S. Treasuries rallied while global equity
benchmarks and bitcoin slid on Thursday, weighed by rising
coronavirus cases in Europe and a selloff that pushed Chinese
blue-chip shares to their lowest levels since early December.
Oil prices slid after surging Wednesday after a container
ship became stuck in the Suez Canal. The ship, which a salvage
team described as a "beached whale," may block the vital
shipping lane for weeks, officials said.
European shares fell on data showing the biggest rise in new
confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany since Jan. 9 and the
largest number of patients with COVID-19 requiring intensive
care in France in the year to date.
The dollar index hit its highest since November
overnight, at 92.697, breaking its 200-day moving average.
The dollar index was up 0.015%, with the euro
down 0.02% to $1.181.
"The dollar is absolutely critical," said James Athey,
investment director at Aberdeen Standard Investments. "If the
dollar starts rallying, that becomes a problem. It means
commodity weakness and emerging-market weakness and it starts to
provide a disinflationary countervailing narrative."
MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe shed
0.48%, dropping for a second day and was at its lowest in more
than two weeks.
Weighing on sentiment was a selloff in Chinese technology
shares amid concern they will be delisted from U.S. exchanges
on worries about a semiconductor shortage.
In Hong Kong, companies with U.S. listings led declines.
JD.com lost 3.57% and Alibaba fell 3.91%.
China's blue-chip CSI300 index edged 0.05% lower
to its lowest close since Dec. 11, weighed by jitters about
policy tightening and rising tensions between China and Western
countries over allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
In morning trading on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial
Average fell 127.69 points, or 0.39%, to 32,292.37, the
S&P 500 lost 15.64 points, or 0.40%, to 3,873.5 and the
Nasdaq Composite dropped 101.97 points, or 0.79%, to
12,859.92.
Benchmark 10-year notes last rose 5/32 in price
to yield 1.598%, from 1.614% late on Wednesday.
Investors have focused on the 10-year Treasury yield,
pondering whether there is room for long-term interest rates to
run, said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Asset
Management.
"We know that the economy is primed to begin to really
accelerate in the second quarter," Kelly said. "But we haven't
seen that acceleration yet, so that's what we're waiting for."
U.S. crude fell 3.2% to $59.22 per barrel and Brent
was at $62.64, down 2.75% on the day.
Spot gold added 0.2% to $1,737.81 an ounce, while
bitcoin slid nearly 6%.
(Reporting by David Randall;
Editing by Bernadette Baum)