20100813 1023 Global Market News.

Asian stocks rebound, yen extends retreat
SYDNEY, Aug 13 (Reuters) - The yen inched further away from 15-year peaks as talk swirled that Japan's authorities may soon intervene to curb it, while Asian stocks edged up to claw back some of the week's heavy losses.
"The market had probably been pretty oversold although given the sentiment out there and the week we've had, there's a risk things could drift heading into the afternoon," said Cameron Peacock, an equity analyst at IG Markets in Sydney.

COMMODITY MARKETS: Grains, beans, sugar, cotton soar on Aug USDA data
NEW YORK, Aug 12 (Reuters) - U.S. wheat futures surged over 2.5 percent by the close, corn and soybeans followed wheat, sugar soared 4 percent and cotton futures finished near a 3-1/2 month high on Thursday all sparked by the U.S. government's assessment of the coming year's crop.
"It looks to me like its macro-fund buying in sugar. I think we're seeing money being invested in buying foodstuffs," said Sterling Smith, a commodity analyst for brokers Country Hedging Inc in Minnesota.

GLOBAL MARKETS: Stocks slip, dollar gains on global growth worry
NEW YORK, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Global stocks slid and the U.S. dollar strengthened on Thursday after weakness in the American jobs market sapped the appetite for risk, driving gold to its biggest one-day gain in more than two months.
"With the weak job report and everything else we heard in the past couple of days, you are finding a safe-haven bid in gold," said Fred Schoenstein, a trader at Heraeus Precious Metals Management in New York.

Hong Kong’s Growth May Slow to 6.3% as Chinese Economy Cools (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong’s economy probably expanded for a third straight quarter from a year earlier as the city sustained its recovery from the global financial crisis. Gross domestic product rose 6.3 percent in the three months ended June 30, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 13 economists. In the first quarter, the expansion was 8.2 percent. The figure is due at 4:30 p.m. today. Growth may keep cooling through the rest of this year as a slowdown in China flows through to the city that serves as trading and financial hub for the world’s fastest-growing major economy. Hong Kong’s gross domestic product may

ANALYSIS-Fast-fading U.S recovery now looks even weaker
WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. consumers will set the course for a gasping economic recovery that is starting to lose two of its strongest sources of support.
Economists have long expected that growth would slow in the second half of this year as government stimulus spending dries up, state and local governments slash outlays, and companies finish restocking lean inventories.

Eurozone June industry output down, strong over Q2
BRUSSELS, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Euro zone industrial production declined in June, with output in France and Germany falling sharply, but a strong showing over the second quarter as a whole suggests Friday's GDP data for the bloc will be robust.
Output fell 0.1 percent month-on-month; figures released by Eurostat on Thursday showed, and rose 8.2 percent year-on-year, although the drop followed sharp increases in April and May.

Global risk selloff eases, worries remain
LONDON, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Financial markets regained some composure after the previous session's broad selloff of riskier assets, with European shares inching up but the euro hurt by new worries about some of its weaker member economies.
"We could see economies relapse and double dip or struggle through and begin to grow with private demand starting to carry their weight," said Peter Elston, strategist at Aberdeen Asset Management in Singapore.