Global Shares Advance on Back of Rally on Wall Street

(AP) -- Shares advanced Tuesday in Europe after closing mostly higher in Asia, though Chinese shares skidded on renewed concerns over pandemic lockdowns.

Oil prices declined and U.S. futures were lower.

Germany's DAX rose 0.9% to 14,043.32 and the CAC 40 in Paris picked up 0.4% to 6,471.95. Britain's FTSE 100 gained 0.6% to 7,423.93. The future for the S&P 500 slipped 0.3% while that for the Dow industrials gave up 0.4%.

An overnight rally on Wall Street carried over into world markets, but declines in Shanghai and Sydney suggest the concerns over China's economy are still having a potent effect.

Beijing is enforcing mass testing and closing down access to some neighborhoods as China's capital seeks to contain a new COVID-19 outbreak. That follows lockdowns in Shanghai and dozens of other cities that economists say might further crimp the world's second-largest economy, hindering global economic growth.

The latest wave of outbreaks came as the economy was slowing due to regulatory crackdowns on technology companies like Alibaba and efforts to bring down high levels of debt in the property sector.

Expectations that the economy, a big consumer of all commodities, might slow further have hit prices of nickel, copper, aluminum and zinc, which fell 3%-5% on Monday.

China's leaders have promised more support for the economy, and investors are watching for the outcome to a meeting of the ruling Communist Party's powerful Politburo, analysts said.

"It seems that threats to China's growth outlook thanks to its COVID-zero policy but begun by its regulatory clampdown and the property developer leverage train wreck, trump all as far as financial markets are concerned," Jeffrey Halley of Oanda said in a commentary.

The Shanghai Composite index fell 1.4% to 2886.43, giving up early gains. On Monday it slumped 5.1%.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng, which lost 3.7% on Monday, closed up 0.3% at 19,934.71.

The Kospi in Seoul gained 0.4% to 2,668.31 after the government reported the South Korean economy grew at a 3.1% annual pace in the first quarter of the year, up 0.7% from the previous quarter.

The economy is rebounding from the travails of the pandemic as the government lifts COVID restrictions since case numbers have abated after a wave of the omicron variant.

"This should drive a bounce back in downtrodden parts of the service sector. And a further drop in precautionary savings should provide an extra boost to consumption," Alex Holmes of Capital Economics said in a commentary. "With private consumption still well below pre-pandemic levels, there is plenty of scope for a rebound," he said.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 rose 0.4% to 26,700.11. India's Sensex gained 1% to 57,149.41.

In Australia, which relies heavily on exports of resources to China, the S&P/ASX 200 dropped 2.1% to 7,318.00.

US. benchmark oil dropped 63 cents to $97.91 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It lost $3.53 to $98.54 on Monday.

Brent crude, the standard for pricing international oil, shed 47 cents to $101.69 per barrel.

The dollar slipped to 128.00 Japanese yen from 128.14 yen late Monday. The euro fell to $1.0688 from $1.0713.

On Monday, the S&P 500 climbed 0.6% after erasing an early 1.7% loss. The rally was led by stocks of internet-related companies, including Twitter, which jumped 5.7% after agreeing to let Tesla CEO and tweeter extraordinaire Elon Musk buy it.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.7%, while the Nasdaq composite rallied 1.3%.

Wall Street is in the midst of one of the most important stretches of the earnings season. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and the parent company of Google are all on deck to report this week. Since they're among the biggest companies by market value, their movements hold the most sway over the S&P 500.

Worries are also high that the U.S. economy might slow sharply or even fall into a recession because of the big interest-rate increases the Fed is expected to push through.

Besides their bottom-line profit numbers, investors are also looking for a better sense of how big companies in the technology, industrial and retail sectors are handling rising inflation and supply chain issues.

Inflation remains a key concern for investors. Investors are worried about whether the Fed will be able to hike rates enough to quell inflation but not so much as to cause a recession. The chair of the Federal Reserve has indicated the central bank may hike short-term interest rates by double the usual amount at upcoming meetings, starting next week. The Fed has already raised its key overnight rate once, the first such increase since 2018.

Wall Street will get some key economic data this week. The Conference Board will release its measure of consumer confidence for April on Tuesday. The Commerce Department will release its first-quarter gross domestic product report on Thursday.