It’s likely to be a confusing start to trading on the ASX today after the long Easter break which saw the overnight futures market not trade for four days.
The Share Price Index (SPI) ended up 26 points before the break on the back of a solid day’s trading on Thursday.
But a more confusing session on Wall Street on Monday saw the Dow down, and small gains for the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq and no trading on the SPI which was closed for the holiday Monday.
The Dow lost 0.2% to end at 26,511, but the S&P 500 rose 0.1% to end at 2,907 and the Nasdaq was up 0.2% at 8,015.
Most markets in Europe didn’t trade and in Asia, Tokyo rose but Shanghai fell in light trading.
Wall Street trading volumes were the lowest for more than six months before Easter.
Hitting sentiment was the news that the Trump Administration will end the exemptions eight countries have to buy oil from Iran.
That starts May 1 and means the likes of China, India, South Korea, and Japan, will have to buy hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day from other sources – a move that hit the oil market hard on Monday, driving prices to six-month highs.
Last week the Dow rose 110 points, or 0.4%, to 26,559.54 and the S&P 500 index added 4.58 points, or 0.2%, to 2,905.03 last Thursday ahead of the Easter break.
Nasdaq Composite reversed its earlier drop to edge up 1.98 points to 7,998.06.
For the week the S&P 500 shed about 0.1% but the Dow climbed 0.6% and the Nasdaq added 0.2%.
This week is likely to be confused thanks to the US move on Iran.
