Asia stocks rise; euro slides on French political quagmire

Asian stocks advanced on Monday buoyed by a rally in tech and China shares, while the dollar firmed in a crucial week for the U.S. interest rate outlook, with the euro sliding as traders grappled with political uncertainty in France.

Incoming U.S. President Donald Trump provided the dollar support by warning the BRICS emerging nations against trying to replace the greenback with any other currency, heaping pressure on emerging market currencies. EMRG/FRX

“There’ll be two drivers of market volatility this month. The first remains the impact of Trump, especially future fiscal settings and, increasingly, looming trade wars,” said Kyle Rodda, senior financial markets analyst at Capital.com.

“The second is what the U.S. Federal Reserve does with policy this month,” Rodda said. “If the Fed delivers (a cut) and provides sufficiently dovish guidance, it may green light some sort of ‘Santa Rally’.”

The euro was struggling due to the risk of an imminent collapse of the French government, with Prime Minister Michel Barnier confronted with a Monday deadline to make more budget concessions or face a no confidence vote.

The single currency EUR=EBS slumped 0.53% to $1.0520 earlier in the day after touching a one-week high of $1.0597 on Friday. French bond futures FOATc1 fell 0.25% and stocks in Europe STXEc1 were poised for a much lower open, futures indicated.

If the Barnier government falls, broader downward pressure on the euro would quickly re-assert itself, including against the Swiss Franc, said Paul Mackel, global head of FX research at HSBC.

The outlook for monetary policy in the region added to the drag on the euro, with the European Central Bank seen cutting rates this month. Markets ascribe a 27% chance it might even ease by 50 basis points on Dec. 12.

The Federal Reserve is also in focus, with Friday’s monthly payrolls report set to inform policymakers’ thinking about whether to cut rates again on Dec. 18.

A number of Fed officials are due to speak this week, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday. Traders currently put the odds of a quarter-point reduction at about 66%.

That has left the dollar index =USD, which measures the currency against six major rivals, 0.24% higher at 106.28.

In Asia, Chinese shares got an additional boost from a robust reading in a private manufacturing survey on Monday.

The survey results largely echoed an official survey on Saturday, which showed manufacturing activity expanded modestly, suggesting a blitz of stimulus is finally trickling through to the world’s second-largest economy.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng .HSI inched 0.16% higher, and mainland Chinese blue chips .CSI300 added 0.6%.

In a holiday-shortened session on Friday, the S&P 500 .SPX and Nasdaq .IXIC added 0.6% and 0.8% respectively to close at all-time highs.

That provided the boost for tech shares in Asia, with Taiwan stocks rising over 2% and South Korea’s KOSPI .KS11 gaining 0.38%. Japan’s Nikkei .N225 rose 0.8%

Japanese government bond yields climbed to a 16-year high after Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda said in an interview published at the weekend that another rate hike is “approaching in the sense that economic data are on track.”

However, Ueda also told the Nikkei that the central bank wants to scrutinise developments in the U.S. economy as there was a “big question mark” on its outlook, such as the fallout from Trump’s proposed tariff hikes.

The yield on two-year JGBs JP2YTN=JBTC jumped 3 basis points to 0.625%, the highest since November of 2008.

Market-implied odds of a quarter-point increase from the BOJ this month stood at around 64%, with the steadily rising expectations boosting the yen.

On Monday, the yen JPY=EBS weakened 0.6% to 150.68 per dollar but remained close to the six-week high of 149.47 it touched on Friday.

In cryptocurrencies, ether ETH= hit a near six-month high of $3,762.20 and was last up 2% at $3,674.44. Bitcoin BTC= was last at $96,434, hovering close to the record high from Nov. 22 at $99,830.

Gold XAU= sank 1% to $2,627.71 under pressure from the strong dollar, after sliding over 3% in November, its worst monthly performance since September 2023.

Oil prices were lifted by the Chinese manufacturing data, and as Israel resumed attacks on Lebanon despite a ceasefire agreement.

Brent crude futures LCOc1 climbed 39 cents to $72.23 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 was at $68.37 a barrel, up 37 cents.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Kevin Buckland, additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore; Editing by Kate Mayberry & Shri Navaratnam)