World shares mostly decline on persisting bond mkt pressure

Bangkok: World shares were mostly lower and oil prices slipped at the outset of a week capped by an annual meeting of top US economic officials at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Iran’s currency hit a record low as the US prepared to announce new sanctions to try to break the impasse with Iran, adding pressure when its economy is already battered by earlier sanctions and a US naval blockade.

The rial dropped to 2.02 million to the US dollar on informal currency markets. Iran’s official Central Bank rate stood at around 1.5 million rial to the dollar, but the informal rate is what most Iranians pay.

In early European trading, Germany’s DAX edged 0.1 per cent lower to 26,110.79, while the CAC 40 in Paris also gave up 0.1 per cent, to 8,474.35. Britain’s FTSE 100 inched up 0.1 per cent to 10,831.33. The future for the S&P 500 was down 0.2 per cent, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.1 per cent.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 fell 0.7 per cent to 65,528.09, while South Korea’s Kospi lost 3.1 per cent to 6,696.96. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong declined 1.9 per cent to 25,517.33 and the Shanghai Composite index gave up 0.6 per cent to 3,882.01. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.5 per cent to 9,103.10, bucking the regional trend. Taiwan’s Taiex fell 1 per cent.

Investors will get an important inflation update on Wednesday when the US releases its report on personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, for July. It is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation. Much like the consumer price index, it has shown that the rate of US consumer inflation remains stubbornly above 3 per cent.