World stock markets extended a five-day run of fresh highs on Thursday, fueled by upbeat earnings and strong U.S. economic data that herald a solid recovery ahead, while Russian markets tumbled at the prospect of the harshest U.S. sanctions in years.
Major stock indexes posted record highs, including MSCI’s global benchmark (.MIWD00000PUS), Europe’s broad STOXX 600 (.STOXX), the Dow Industrials (.DJI) and the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX), as bonds yields tumbled.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury note slid below 1.6% to yield 1.563%, a fall of 7.4 basis points that helped spur renewed buying of big tech stocks in the biggest single-day decline in the benchmark’s yield in almost three months.
MSCI’s (.MIWD00000PUS) all-country world index of equity performance in 50 countries, which is heavily weighted to Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), jumped 0.89% and is now up 8.6% for the year.
Growth (.RLG) stocks regained their footing, rising 1.7% against a 0.6% gain in value names (.RLV) on Thursday, as measured by the Russell 1000 indexes.
