World shares consolidate overnight

Traders Fred Demarco, left, and Joseph Chirico, right, work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. File photo / AP.

Global shares traded in a narrow range overnight as investors assessed data pointing to a brighter outlook and awaited news of a definitive deal between Greece and its international creditors.

In late trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.18 percent, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index inched 0.01 percent higher. The Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 0.01 percent. Earlier in the session, the Nasdaq climbed to a record 5,163.41.

In the Dow, gains in shares of UnitedHealth and those of JPMorgan Chase, up 1.5 per cent and 1 perc ent respectively, outweighed slides in shares of DuPont and those of Boeing, down 1.9 per cent and 1.1 percent respectively.

The latest US economic data were promising. A Commerce Department report showed new orders for durable goods, products meant to last at least three years, fell a seasonally adjusted 1.8 percent last month. Still, orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft, considered a gauge for business spending, rose 0.4 percent in May.

"These are encouraging signs," John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York, told Reuters. "We need to see further gains over the next couple of months before we can more firmly conclude that manufacturing orders are rebounding."

Separately, another Commerce Department report showed new home sales increased 2.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 546,000 units in May, the highest level since February 2008. It added to recent signs of an improvement in the housing industry.

"Look for significant increases in housing starts -- we have to catch up to these demand numbers," Aneta Markowska, chief US economist at Societe Generale in New York, told Bloomberg. "This could be the best year for housing in terms of how much it contributes to GDP since 2012."

Indeed, Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell said the US economy might warrant a first interest rate hike in September, followed by a second increase in December.

"If those things are realised, I feel that it is time, it will be time, potentially as soon as September," Powell, a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, said at a Wall Street Journal event in Washington. "I don't think the odds are 100 percent. I think they're probably in the 50-50 range that we will realise those conditions, but that's my forecast."

Powell is the latest Fed official to make it clear that the US central bank expects to lift rates within the next six months.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index ended the day with a 1.2 percent gain from the previous close, while Greece's ASE Index surged 6.1 percent. The UK's FTSE 100 Index added 0.1 per cent, Germany's DAX climbed 0.7 per cent, while France's CAC 40 Index advanced 1.2 per cent.

"The base case is that Greece will be saved and kept in the euro in a last minute deal," Daniel Weston, chief investment officer of Aimed Capital in Munich, Germany, told Bloomberg. "Irrespective of the Greek rhetoric, European growth is on the rebound and inflation has shown very early signs of a rise, indicating that QE is working and being risk-on is still the place to be."

Greece's top negotiator told a Greek broadcaster that he believed a deal was closer than ever with the nation's creditors, adding that it would only be accepted if it was deemed a viable accord.