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\u00a0ahead of this week’s rates decision from the Fed.<\/p>\n
The Nasdaq was lifted by Microsoft’s 1.8% gain on news it 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 a 0.7% decline on opening, which if it eventuates will wipe out Friday’s 0.7% gain.<\/p>\n
Over the week, the S&P gained 1.6%, as did the broader European market.<\/p>\n
Closer to home, China picked 1.4% 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%),\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. 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.<\/p>\n
The Australian dollar slipped slightly but is still trading around 66.50 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.<\/p>\n
However, the gains eased mid-session when traders remembered that cracks were appearing in the US economy and that demand might 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.<\/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.<\/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":7663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[922,929,931,28,926,919,935,934,112,921,930,7834,7833,923,918],"class_list":["post-157104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-markets","tag-asx","tag-australian-dollar","tag-bitcoin","tag-business","tag-dollar","tag-dow-jones","tag-live-blog","tag-live-update","tag-markets","tag-nasdaq","tag-nyse","tag-sp","tag-share-market","tag-stocks","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}