By Sinéad Carew and Marc Jones
NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) -Global equities were slightly higher on Thursday, with Wall Street outperforming, while the dollar and Treasury yields also gained after the United States and United Kingdom outlined a trade deal, fueling hopes for compromises with other countries.
Cryptocurrencies were also bolstered by the U.S.-UK trade agreement, which was the first pact announced in the month since U.S. President Donald Trump started a 90-day pause on trade tariffs to give room for negotiations.
The deal, unveiled by Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, leaves in place a 10% tariff on goods imported from the UK but lowers prohibitive U.S. duties on UK car exports. Britain agreed to lower its tariffs to 1.8% from 5.1% and provide greater access to U.S. goods.
Investors were encouraged as they waited for planned talks between U.S. and Chinese officials in Switzerland over the weekend, which are seen as a first step in dialing down the damaging trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.
“There’s optimism growing around trade deals, not only this UK deal that was announced today, but around what might happen over the weekend,” said Mona Mahajan, head of investment strategy at Edward Jones, adding that the S&P 500 has risen sharply since the lows of April.
Wall Street indexes pulled back from their session highs in the last hour of trading but still finished the day with gains.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 254.48 points, or 0.62%, to 41,368.45, the S&P 500 rose 32.66 points, or 0.58%, to 5,663.94 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 189.98 points, or 1.07%, to 17,928.14.
The CBOE volatility index, also known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, registered its lowest closing level since April 2, also a bullish signal.
MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe rose 0.83 points, or 0.10%, to 844.86. Earlier the pan-European STOXX 600 index closed up 0.4%.
The trade news followed the latest U.S. central bank policy update on Wednesday, when the U.S. Federal Reserve took a wait-and-see stance on interest rates and warned that risks of higher inflation and higher unemployment had risen as it navigates uncertainty caused by Trump’s trade policies.
In government bonds, U.S. Treasury yields touched multi-week highs, as the U.S.-UK deal spurred optimism for agreements with other countries in the coming weeks and months.
“If tariff threats start to recede and if this UK deal is the beginning of a range of deals coming up, then you would think (Federal Reserve Chair Jerome) Powell wouldn’t have to cut rates very much at all,” John Velis, macro strategist for the Americas, at BNY in New York.