GLOBAL MARKETS-Oil gains on OPEC+ deal, stocks stymied by pandemic worries

* Oil prices rise in choppy trade
* U.S. stock futures fall over 1%
* Investors brace for earnings scorecards
* Asian stock markets: https://tmsnrt.rs/2zpUAr4

By Hideyuki Sano and Anshuman Daga
TOKYO/SINGAPORE, April 13 (Reuters) - Global equities
weakened on Monday as investors braced for more indications of
economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic while oil prices
rose in choppy trade following a landmark deal by OPEC and its
allies to cut output.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were
up 3.9% at $23.6 per barrel in a volatile session, having fallen
more than 3% to $22.03 earlier in the day.
Those moves came after a group of oil producing countries
known as OPEC+, which includes Russia, agreed to reduce
production by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) for May-June,
after four days of marathon talks. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan
.MIAPJ0000PUS lost 0.3%. The Nikkei .N225 fell 1.9%, South
Korean shares .KS11 dropped 1.3% while China's CSI300 index
.CSI300 lost 0.5%.
"The combined OPEC+ and G-20 cuts should set in place a
bottoming process for oil prices and significantly limit the
tail risk of free-falling into the single digits in our view,"
Bank of Singapore, the private banking arm of OCBC, said in a
report.
International benchmark Brent futures LCOc1 rose 2.7% to
$32.65 per barrel but were trading below the day's highs.
Oil prices have slumped more than 50% from their January
peak as the novel coronavirus pandemic brought the global
economy to a standstill and hit fuel demand.
Investors are now looking to see if the novel coronavirus
pandemic, which has battered global economic growth, will soon
peak in the United States and Europe, as had been initially
expected.
"While panic selling we saw last month has faded, not many
investors would want to chase stock prices higher given we are
about to see more evidence of economic downturns," said Masahiro
Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset
Management.
U.S. S&P 500 mini futures EScv1 dropped 1.4%, erasing a
brief gain to a one-month high hit earlier in the Asian session.
Financial markets in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong were
closed for a public holiday on Monday as are European markets
such as Britain, Germany and France.
Asia's main ex-Japan stocks gauge is up 18% from a four-year
low struck around mid-March following unprecedented global
stimulus. But the index is off about 18% so far this year as
investors are unconvinced that the worst is over for the
markets.
Earnings scorecards from U.S. companies are in focus this
week, with banks among the first to report, while China releases
its trade data on Tuesday and closely watched gross domestic
product figures on Friday.
Companies are only now adjusting their behaviour to deal
with an expected global recession, which the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) has said will be "way worse" than the global
financial crisis a decade ago. Kia Motors Corp 000270.KS told its labour union in South
Korea that it wants to suspend operations at three of its
domestic factories as the outbreak weighs on exports to Europe
and the United States. In foreign exchange markets, commodity currencies were
softer while the safe-haven yen strengthened. FRX/
The Australian dollar fell 0.2% to $0.63337 AUD=D4 . The
euro stood steady at $1.0937 EUR= and the yen gained 0.5% to
107.91 to the dollar JPY= .

(Editing by Sam Holmes)