European markets gain, while Asian shares drop

DAX gained 0.8% to 18,311.32, the CAC 40 added 0.8% to 7,596.64, the FTSE 100 advanced 0.5% to 8,194.82, Nikkei 225 slid 1.2% to 39,599.00, the Shanghai Composite index declined 0.6% to 2,964.22, S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.5% to 7,931.70 and Kospi shed 1.1% to 2,763.51

European markets opened with gains Monday after President Joe Biden exited the 2024 race, while Asian shares mostly dropped.

Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race on Sunday and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take on former President Donald Trump.

Biden’s decision “barely dented financial markets,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

U.S. yields and the dollar opened slightly weaker in Asia but then rebounded, suggesting investors were fully clued into this outcome. The odds of a Trump victory also haven’t changed much, he said.

Germany’s DAX gained 0.8% to 18,311.32 in early trading and the CAC 40 in Paris added 0.8% to 7,596.64. In London, the FTSE 100 advanced 0.5% to 8,194.82.

The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.3% and that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1%.

In Asian trading, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 slid 1.2% to 39,599.00.

The Hang Seng in Hong Kong gained 1.3% to 17,635.88 and the Shanghai Composite index declined 0.6% to 2,964.22 after China's central bank unexpectedly lowered its one-year benchmark LPR, which is the standard reference for most business loans, to 3.35% from 3.45%.

The People's Bank of China reduced the five-year LPR, a benchmark for mortgages, to 3.85% from 3.95%, aiming to boost slowing growth and break out of a drawn out property slump.

Elsewhere in Asia, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.5% to 7,931.70 and South Korea’s Kospi shed 1.1% to 2,763.51.

On Friday, the S&P 500 fell 0.7%, closing its first losing week in the last three and its worst since April. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.9%, while the Nasdaq composite sank 0.8%.

Friday’s moves came as the major outage disrupted flights and banks around the world. Cyber security firm CrowdStrike said the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyber attack and that it had deployed a fix. The firm said the problem lay in a faulty update sent to computers running Microsoft Windows.