A solid start to stockmarket trading today, according to the futures market, and if that happens it will be a gladly accepted relief after the nasty $20 billion plus sell-off on the ASX on Friday.
Thanks to a positive lead from Wall Street, ASX 200 futures rose 23 points or 0.5% on Saturday morning suggesting the positive start to trade later this morning.
US markets liked the solid jobs report for March of 215,000 new jobs, a small rise in wage costs, a rise in the participation rate and a consequent rise in the jobless rate to 5% from 4.9%.
Wall Street though ignored a 4% plus slide in oil prices and weakness elsewhere in commodities – that will probably catch up with investors this week.
European markets though ignored the US jobs news and closed Friday night with losses. Eurozone shares fell 1.4% on Friday as the fall in oil prices weighed on energy stocks in Europe.
The US S&P 500 reversed an initial 0.7% slide to close with a gain of 0.6% thanks to solid employment and a surprisingly strong report on the health of US manufacturing in March, which was a recovery from several months of weak readings.
The $US and global bond yields were down, with the Australian dollar ending the week around 76.77 US cents after topping 77 US cents for the third session in a row.
Gold was barely steady over the week, copper fell sharply and oil lost ground.
US shares ended last week up 1.8%, Chinese shares also rose 1% for the week helped by optimism that the Chinese economy may be stabilising as the two surveys of manufacturing activity for March suggested on Friday.
But European shares lost 0.6% and Japanese shares fell 4.9% (with most of that happening Friday in the wake of more gloomy reports on the health of manufacturing).
Australian shares fell 1.7% with all but 0.1% of that happening on Friday. Worries about more bank bad debt charges drove bank shares low and the wider market (the banks account for 27% of the ASX 200’s value).
On Wall Street, The S&P 500 rose 13.05 points, or 0.6%, to settle at 2,072.79, early Saturday morning our time. It was up 1.8% for the week.
The Dow jumped 107.73 points, or 0.6%, to end at 17,792.82. Over the week the Dow was up 1.6%, and Nasdaq added 44.69 points, or 0.9%, to 4,914.54 for a weekly gain of 3% – its biggest for six weeks.
In Europe shares started the second quarter with a loss on Friday, hurt by the weak data from Japan and remaining lower oil prices, fears about banks and despite the solid March jobs report for the US.
The Stoxx Europe index lost 1.3% to end at 333.15 on Friday and lost 0.6% over the week. It shed 7.7% in the March quarter, so the losing trend continues.
Germany’s DAX 30 slid 1.7% to 9,794.64, France’s CAC 40 dropped 1.4% to 4,322.24 and London’s FTSE 100 fell0.5% to 6,146.5. In Asia it was losses everywhere on Friday except for a small rise in Shanghai. Tokyo stood out with a fall of 3.5% on Friday, which was well over half the near 5% slide for the week.
In Australia ASX 200 Index and the All Ordinaries Index fell 1.6% and 1.5% respectively, dipping below 5000 to 4999.4 points and 5073.8 points respectively, taking the week’s losses to 1.7%.
For the week, Commonwealth Bank of Australia was down 2.4% to $72.99, Westpac Banking Corporation fell 3.9% to $29.65. ANZ lost 5% to $22.81, and the National Australia Bank fell 2.2% to $25.68. Macquarie Group fell 5.9% last week.
