Wall Street’s performance on Friday night didn’t convince local punters and our market will start in the red after the ASX 200 futures contract ended down 13 points early Saturday.
While eurozone shares rose 0.3% on Friday, the Dow and the S&P 500 slipped, while Nasdaq ended steady – that was despite solid economic data showing the US economy is travelling pretty well.
The US dollar lost nearly 1% last week against its six major trading currencies and while gold rose (as did copper) and oil edged a touch higher, the weak US lead saw ASX 200 futures fall 0.2% pointing to a 13 point decline at the open for the Australian share market this morning.
Friday’s end on Wall Street was a bit of an anti climax given the ‘dovish’ rate hike from the Fed and relief that the Dutch election saw a rejection of far right Eurosceptics.
US shares gained 0.2%, Eurozone shares rose 1.2% and Chinese shares rose 0.5%. Reflecting the positive global lead resources shares helped drive Australian shares 0.4% higher. Japanese shares slipped 0.4%.
The Fed’s rate hike also saw bond yields and the $US decline which in turn helped commodity prices, emerging market shares and the Aussie dollar which ended just over 77 US cents, up nearly two cents in the past six trading days, and up around 0.30 of a cent from the close in Australia on Friday afternoon.
On Wall Street, US stocks ended higher for the week but the Dow and S&P 500 closed lower on the session.
The Dow fell 19.93 points, or 0.1%, to finish at 20,914.62. For the week, the Dow closed up less than 0.1%. The S&P 500 index lost 3.13 points, or 0.1%, at 2,378.25. For the week, the S&P 500 closed up 0.2%. The Nasdaq Composite index finished up 0.24 points at 5,901.00, for a 0.7% gain on the week.
The ASX moved closer to 2017 highs last week, but will be weaker today.
The ASX 200 index closed 0.2% higher on Friday at 5799.6 points, taking its weekly gain to 0.4%.
The benchmark index on Friday rose as high as 5815, just 18 points from of the year’s high struck in February.
While investors took some profits on Friday, BHP Billiton rose 4.9% over the week, (by far the reason for the index’s rise). Rio Tinto added 6.7%, South32 was up 5.3%, Fortescue rallied 9.7% and gold miner Newcrest 6.1%.
Banks were mostly lower over the week, after a fall in global bond yields weighed on the sector. NAB lost 3.1%, Westpac fell 1.4%, ANZ slipped 1.2% but the rose 0.3%.
Myer shares on Friday bounced back from Thursday’s slide, rising 5.1% to after some positive analyst comments about its interim result.
