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Markets eye dovish tilt at Fed as Miran nominated

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Gold futures gain on uncertainty over US tariff

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Oil prices fall on report of US-Russia truce deal

(Updated at 4:19 p.m. ET (2019 GMT)

By Chris Prentice and Amanda Cooper

NEW YORK/LONDON, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Global equities rose

on Friday as investors clung to the view that U.S. interest

rates may fall further this year, with European shares posting

their biggest weekly gain in 12 weeks on strength from banking

stocks.

U.S. gold futures hit a record high on uncertainty over

whether country-specific U.S. import tariffs would apply to the

most commonly traded sizes of gold bars.

Investors watched for signs of a potential Russia-Ukraine

ceasefire after a report that the United States and Russia are

aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine.

President Donald Trump on Thursday moved to reshape the U.S.

central bank, nominating Council of Economic Advisers' Chair

Stephen Miran for a short-term board seat after Adriana Kugler's

abrupt exit.

Miran holds similar views to Trump, who has berated Powell

for being "too late" in cutting rates, even though growth is

holding up and inflation is ticking higher.

"It locks in a vote for rate cuts at all the meetings

between now and the end of January," said Ray Attrill, head of

FX strategy at National Australia Bank ( NAUBF ) in Sydney.

"Markets are already travelling with a very strong

expectation that there will be a rate cut," he added. "Though

there's a question mark over whether he'll succeed in

ratification in time for the September meeting."

Bloomberg News reported that Fed Governor Christopher Waller

was emerging as a leading contender for the role of Fed chair.

MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe

rose 0.52%. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones

Industrial Average rose 0.47% to 44,175.61, the S&P 500

added 0.78% to 6,389.45 and the Nasdaq Composite

climbed 0.98% to 21,450.02.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.2% to

finish the week up more than 2% as largely upbeat corporate

results and firming bets of more Fed rate cuts lifted prices

from last week's five-week lows.

Shares also saw a lift from optimism that hefty U.S. tariffs

that kicked in on Thursday would be subject to negotiation.

Zurich's SMI index gained as traders continued to shrug

off Switzerland's 39% U.S. tariff coming into effect.

"The effective shock (from tariffs) is there. So the

question now is: How is it going to impact the economy and the

data, and when? Because up to now, let's be fair, it's been less

severe than most have anticipated," Lombard Odier economist Samy

Chaar said.

Overall tariffs may be lower than many had feared back in

April, but they are at their highest in at least a century.

Relief over lower-than-expected duties may be short-lived as

a result. For instance, the European Union now has a 15% tariff

rather than the 50% that Trump had threatened, Chaar said.

"That's the vulnerability in the market... It is focusing on

the good news, which is not getting the 50%, but getting the

15%. And then the problem is that 15% is actually a big shock

and, at some point, it's going to show in the data," he said.

U.S. Treasury yields rose on Friday, with the yield on the

benchmark 10-year note poised for its first weekly gain in three

weeks after a series of weak auctions.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection service released a ruling

on its website on Friday, which the gold industry interpreted as

meaning that country-specific U.S. import tariffs could apply to

the most-traded sizes of gold bars in the U.S.

December U.S. gold futures settled 1.1% higher at

$3,491.30 per ounce after hitting a record $3,534.10 when the

Financial Times first reported the news.

Spot gold eased 0.08% to $3,394.24 an ounce.

Brent oil futures settled up 0.24% at $66.59 per

barrel and U.S. crude settled unchanged at $63.88 per barrel.

Expectations of a potential truce between Russia and Ukraine

had weighed on oil prices earlier in the U.S. trading session.

Both benchmarks were also under pressure from a tariff-hit

economic outlook and finished with weekly losses.

The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes rose

3.9 basis points to 4.283%.

The Japanese yen weakened 0.44% against the

greenback.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback

against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro,

rose 0.31%, with the euro down 0.23%.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan

closed down 0.63%, while Japan's Nikkei

rose 1.85%.

(Additional reporting by Gregor Stuart Hunter in Singapore and

Nikhil Sharma and Pranav Kashyap in Bengaluru; Editing by

Richard Chang, Daniel Wallis and Nia Williams)