NEW YORK, Sept 22 — World stock markets stabilised yesterday and oil prices regained ground a day after heavy selling of risk assets, as investors assessed the level of contagion stemming from distress at developer China Evergrande and awaited central bank meetings.

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe edged up 0.13 per cent, following Monday’s biggest percentage drop in two months. Wall Street’s main indexes ended mixed after solid equity advances in Europe.

Price moves in bonds and currencies were relatively subdued. On Monday, safe-haven assets drew bids as investors became risk averse. Gold pushed higher again yesterday, in a sign of investor caution.

Investors were focused on the situation at Evergrande, where persistent default fears eclipsed efforts by the debt-laden group’s chairman to lift confidence as Beijing showed no sign it would intervene to stem any domino effects across the global economy.

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There are “some investors willing to step back in after a pretty big whack yesterday,” said Chuck Carlson, chief executive officer at Horizon Investment Services in Hammond, Indiana.

“The idea that (Evergrande) possibly being ‘contained’ has probably gained a little bit of steam today.”

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 50.63 points, or 0.15 per cent, to 33,919.84, the S&P 500 lost 3.54 points, or 0.08 per cent, to 4,354.19 and the Nasdaq Composite added 32.50 points, or 0.22 per cent, to 14,746.40.

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The Cboe Volatility Index fell 1.35 points to 24.36 after hitting a four-month high a day earlier.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 1 per cent, with Germany’s DAX rising 1.4 per cent.

Canada’s main stock index gained as the re-election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals reassured investors that the outlook for the economy would continue to improve.

Central bank meetings in the United States and elsewhere in the world were soon to take centre stage for markets, with a Federal Reserve meeting due to conclude today as investors look for when it will ease its bond-buying programme.

In currency trading, the dollar index fell 0.012 per cent, with the euro down 0.03 per cent to US$1.1722 (RM4.90). The Japanese yen strengthened 0.18 per cent versus the greenback at 109.20 per dollar.

“There is just a lot of wait-and-see as far as what is going to happen with the Fed, what is going to happen with Evergrande, and right now if you are trying to make a dollar bet you really just want to wait until you get a better sense of what is going to happen with Evergrande and what the Chinese government is going to do,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA in New York.

Benchmark 10-year US Treasury notes last fell 5/32 in price to yield 1.3243 per cent, from 1.309 per cent late on Monday.

Oil prices edged higher in a see-saw session, as concerns about the global consumption outlook counterbalanced the struggle by big Opec producers to pump enough supply to meet growing demand.

US crude settled up 0.4 per cent at US$70.56 per barrel and Brent settled at US$74.36, up 0.6 per cent on the day.

Spot gold added 0.5 per cent to US$1,773.09 an ounce. — Reuters