Wall St leads global shares higher, gold slips

By Rodrigo Campos

NEW YORK (Reuters) - World equity markets added to recent gains on Tuesday as Wall Street hit a record high after strong factory data, while manufacturing numbers in China reinforced expectations that the country will undertake stimulus mesures.

Spot gold hit a seven-week low and other safe-havens like the yen weakened. Two surveys on Tuesday showed that manufacturing in China struggled in March, bolstering talk that Beijing will bring in selective stimulus.

U.S. manufacturing growth accelerated for a second straight month in March as production recovered, relieving fears that the economy had hit a stumbling block.

"Again it shows we are coming out of this winter chill," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York. "Economic growth is going to accelerate in the coming months and confirm the slowdown we had in the first quarter was related to weather factors."

The S&P 500 hit a record intraday high shortly after the manufacturing data, boosting MSCI's world stocks gauge up 0.5 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 56.71 points or 0.34 percent, to 16,514.37, the S&P 500 gained 6.87 points, or 0.37 percent, to 1,879.21, and the Nasdaq Composite added 45.975 points, or 1.09 percent, to 4,244.969.

The S&P earlier hit an intraday record high, at 1,884.60.

European stocks rose, lifted by merger activity as well as robust French factory data. The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was up 0.6 percent.

An index of emerging market shares topped the 1,000 level for the first time since January 2 and was up for an eighth straight day, supported by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's comments a day earlier on the need for "extraordinary" commitment to support the U.S. economy.

Anxiety over the possibility of rising U.S. interest rates has kept emerging market assets and currencies under pressure for months.

EURO UP, GOLD SLIPS

The expectation of Fed support kept the U.S. currency under pressure from the euro, but the dollar hit a session high against the yen after the U.S. manufacturing data. The yen was also weakened by Japan's sales tax increase, to 8 percent from 5 percent, the first increase in 17 years.

The euro's gains versus the greenback remained capped by talk the European Central Bank, which meets on Thursday, may have to cut interest rates again in coming months to keep deflation at bay.

The euro was up 0.3 percent at $1.3807.

The yen, another traditional safe haven, slipped to a three-week low against the dollar. It was last down 0.3 percent at 103.50 per dollar.

Spot gold, one of this year's surprise star performers after a 2013 slump, hit a seven-week low of 1,278.34 per ounce. It was recently down 0.3 percent at $1.280.20. The price is still up more than 6 percent year-to-date.

Among commodities, Brent crude fell nearly 1 percent to below $107 after the weak Chinese data and on the possibility of a jump in supplies from Libya after rebels blocking eastern oil ports hinted at a deal with Tripoli.

U.S. crude futures fell 1 percent to $100.57 a barrel.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Leslie Adler)