The three key Wall Street indices went their separate ways on Friday.<\/p>\n
The tech-centric Nasdaq (+0.4%) hit a new record, the blue-chip Dow went backwards (-0.6%) and the S&P 500 went nowhere,<\/b> ahead of this week’s rates decision from the Fed.<\/p>\n
The Nasdaq was lifted by Microsoft’s 1.8% gain<\/b> on news it had dodged a massive EU antitrust fine by offering to cut prices on Office products in Europe.<\/p>\n
ASX futures trading closed on Friday night pointing to 0.7% decline<\/b> on opening, which if it eventuates would wipe out Friday’s 0.7% gain.<\/p>\n
Over the week the S&P gained 1.6%, as did the broader European market.<\/b><\/p>\n
Closer to home, China picked 1.4%<\/b> while Japan was the standout in the region, up more than 4% over the five sessions.<\/p>\n
The ASX was marginally lower (-0.1%),<\/b>\u00a0its second straight losing week.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s announcement (Thursday 4am AEST) from the US Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee is dominating market sentiment at the moment.<\/p>\n
A softening jobs market seems to have sealed the deal on a cut \u2014 the question is, by how much?<\/p>\n
Reuters reported the Fed fund futures is indicating the markets are expecting a 90% chance that the Fed lowers rates by 25 basis points.<\/p>\n
The balance of expectations left about a 10% chance for a larger-than-standard 50 bp cut.<\/p>\n
The prospects of a cut, and two more this year, saw the US dollar rise against most major trading partners.<\/b><\/p>\n
The Australian dollar slipped slightly but is still trading around 66.50<\/b> US cents.<\/p>\n
The oil price surged after a Ukrainian drone attack hit Russia’s largest oil terminal, with the global benchmark Brent Crude ending the session 0.9% higher at $US66.99\/barrel.<\/b><\/p>\n
However, the gains eased mid-session when traders remembered that cracks are appearing in the US economy and that demand may weaken.<\/p>\n
Again Capital partner John Kilduff says US economic data is currently not supportive of an oil rally.<\/p>\n
“The overall weight is down and the trend is bearish,” Mr Kilduff said.<\/p>\n
On other commodity markets, Friday capped a strong week for most metals, although copper slipped a tad but gained more than 2% over the week.<\/b><\/p>\n
Iron ore gained 0.5% on Friday to be 1% over the week, while the gold’s rush continued (+0.2%) above $US3,600\/ounce.<\/b><\/p>\n
Thermal coal was out of favour again, dropping 0.2% on Friday to be down more than 6% over the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The three key Wall Street indices went their separate ways on Friday. The tech-centric Nasdaq (+0.4%) hit a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3091],"tags":[3384,3377,2257,51,3381,14408,5193,31971,2441,976,31970,3582,31969,7063,16,15,2413],"class_list":{"0":"post-424705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-asx","9":"tag-australian-dollar","10":"tag-bitcoin","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-dollar","13":"tag-dow-jones","14":"tag-live-blog","15":"tag-live-update","16":"tag-markets","17":"tag-nasdaq","18":"tag-nyse","19":"tag-sp","20":"tag-share-market","21":"tag-stocks","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-united-kingdom","24":"tag-wall-street"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115204915525123071","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}