By Frances Yoon and Anna Isaac 

S&P 500 futures rose, alongside most European stock indexes, as investors weighed the impact of rising U.S.-China trade tensions against signs that economic activity is gathering steam.

U.S. futures contracts tied to the S&P 500 rose 0.6% Wednesday.

European stocks also ticked higher. The pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.4%, joined in positive territory by London's FTSE 100 and other regional indexes.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury fell to 0.685% from 0.697% Tuesday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed more than 500 points Tuesday, as trading resumed after the three-day holiday weekend. Restaurant bookings and spending on hotels and airlines appear to be picking up in the U.S., coinciding with a decline in the daily number of new coronavirus infections.

Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 0.7% Wednesday, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 and South Korea's Kospi Composite were little changed. China's Shanghai Composite drifted 0.3% lower.

Steve Englander, head of North America macro strategy and Group of 10 currencies at Standard Chartered Bank, said investors were buying back assets that they sold off at the height of the pandemic.

"There is some confidence in markets that the worst has passed with the disease and that a worst-case scenario -- where, for example, we are locked up for six months -- is now assigned a lower probability," he said.

But financial markets are still fragile, said Daniel Gerard, senior global multiasset strategist at State Street Global Markets, with investors watching news on issues such as the pandemic, including vaccine progress, and U.S.-China relations.

"It's hard enough in this pandemic to get trade going on because of an uneven recovery," Mr. Gerard said. "If we add complications of the trade war, it will delay a recovery."

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index traded 0.8% lower. The market is coming off two days of gains that recouped some of the steep losses registered Friday, after China unveiled plans to impose a national-security law on the city.

Mr. Gerard said the prospect of renewed unrest in Hong Kong added to growth concerns for some heavyweight components of the Hang Seng, such as financial stocks and developers.

On Tuesday, the head of China's military garrison in Hong Kong said his soldiers would safeguard the country's national-security interests in the city, reinforcing an aggressive push by the Communist Party to tighten its grip on the former British colony.

U.S. crude-oil prices fell 1.6% to $33.76 a barrel, after rising for seven of the past eight sessions.

Write to Frances Yoon at frances.yoon@wsj.com and Anna Isaac at anna.isaac@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 27, 2020 04:00 ET (08:00 GMT)

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