Equities and commodities finished the week mixed, with some in positive territory, but gold had its first weekly loss for several months.
Wall Street ended with a small gain of less than 1% for all three indexes – the Dow, Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq.
Volume was very light after two weeks of more active trading.
Reuters said just 5.76 billion shares were traded on the NYSE, Amex and Nasdaq.
The daily average this year has been around 8.8 billion shares and these levels recall the sluggish weeks of late August.
The Dow dropped 14.01 points, or 0.13%, to 11,132.56.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added 2.82 points, or 0.24%, to 1,183.08.
Nasdaq Composite Index rose 19.72 points, or 0.80%, to 2,479.39.
For the week the Dow and the S&P 500 each rose 0.6% while the Nasdaq was up 0.4%, despite some solid third quarter results from the likes of Google.
But Nasdaq is up more than 17% since the end of August compared with the S&P 500, which is up 12.7%.
Australian sharemarket rose 0.5% on Friday after a late bounce saw prices rise from being mostly flat for the day.
At the close, the benchmark ASX200 Index was up 25.3 points, or 0.5%, to 4,648.2, but posted its first weekly loss in three weeks, losing about 0.9%.
The All Ordinaries Index rose 23.2 points, or 0.5%, to 4,719.6.
European stocks fell on Friday, dropping the Stoxx Europe 600 Index from a six-month high.
But for the week the index was up 0.4% (it was the third up week in a row) and it has risen 2.7% so far this month.
Bloomberg said indices rose on 16 of the 18 major markets in Western Europe.
The two exceptions were Iceland and Holland.
Germany’s DAX Index rose 1.7%; France’s CAC was up 1.1% and London’s FTSE rose 0.7%.
Asian markets took a breather, closing lower for the first time in two months.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped 0.8% last week on profit taking after China’s surprised rate rise and third quarter figures showed an economy still doing well.
South Korea’s Kospi Index lost 0.3%, and China’s Shanghai Composite Index was little changed after a big run up.
Australia was lower as was Japan’s Nikkei which dropped 0.8%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index eased 1.1%.
Wheat prices rose after Russia’s government extended the embargo on grain export for another half year until July 1, 2011.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he had signed a decree extending the export moratorium.
He said this year Russia has harvested about 60 million tonnes of grain, despite the bad weather conditions and the drought.
The earlier decision banned grain export from August 15 to the end of the year.
The embargo was enacted after the severe drought in central Russia in their last summer.
Chicago wheat futures jumped, but the news didn’t impact corn and soybeans which again eased.
December wheat rose 2 USc to $US6.7075 US dollars a bushel.
December corn slid 4.15c to $US5.6 dollars per bushel and November soybean shed two cents to $US11.995 dollars a bushel.
News of Russia’s extension had been largely anticipated, but it was still the biggest bit of market moving news on Friday.
The slightly stronger tone to the US dollar contributed to the fall in gold, which closed lower over the week for the first time in nearly three months.
Gold fell 3.3% after China’s rate rise earlier in the week saw a sharp fall and a bout of profit taking.
Spot gold was up slightly at $US1,323.81 an ounce after falling to a 10 week low of $US1,315.09.
Comex December gold futures fell $US1.30 an ounce to $US1,324.30.
Spot prices rallied sharply to a record $US1,387.10 an ounce late the week before, but it’s been downhill since then.
Silver fell 0.3% to $US23.12 an ounce, its biggest weekly loss since early July.
And oil futures prices finished above $US80 a barrel on Friday.
Nymex December crude rose $US1.13, or 1.4%, to $US81.69 a barrel.
But oil still ended the week down, just 24c, or 0.3%.
