Markets around the world limped to the end of the month, trimming gains or pushing indexes into the red.
Oil rose strongly over the month, gold did, until this week when it sold off, as did silver. Copper had a solid month, while iron ore had a second fall overnight Thursday, trimming the month’s gains to 9%.
Wall Street had a nasty sell off overnight Thursday, following on from its drop the day before after the Fed confused its message on the timing of the next rate rise.
That sell-off saw the Dow briefly go negative for the year, before a small bounce took it back into the black by the close.
US markets had gains for April of less than 1% – our market dropped 1.7% with the losses happening in the sell-off of the past three days.
The overnight share price futures contract has the ASX starting May steady after a late rally this morning.
The sell off of the past week saw some big gains eroded – and some surprise losses and gains.
For example the Aussie dollar rose more than 4% against the greenback, and over 3% on the trade-weighted index (against all major currencies).
No wonder there’s talk of the RBA cutting rates next Tuesday – a story which helped trimmed the gains on the dollar yesterday and overnight, forcing it back from well over 80 cents to around 79 cents in trading early today.
The S&P 500 lost 21.34 points, or 1%, to 2,085.51, but ended up 0.9% gain over the month. Tech and health-care stocks were hit the hardest overnight.
The Dow dropped 195.01 points, or 1.1%, to 17,840.52, leaving it with a gain of 0.4% for April, and flat year-to-date.
At one stage it was down 250 points and in the red for the first four months of the year.
The Nasdaq was battered, losing 82.22 points, or 1.6%, to 4,941.42. But the index was still up 0.8% for the month.
Major tech stocks such as Apple, Linked In, Facebook, Twitter and a host of biotechs hit the wall this week as they reported weak (or even very good, in the case of Apple) financial results.
The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology index dropped 3.2% overnight is now down more than 8% from its peak reached last Thursday and dragging the Nasdaq lower.
Markets in Europe sold off with the German Dax losing more than 4% in April – clipping its gain for the year.
Most of that loss came this week with bonds selling off and the yield on the 10 year German bond jumping to more than 0.37% after hitting a low of 0.005% a week or so ago.
US bonds also sold off and the yield on 10 year treasuries ended at $2.03% after reaching above $2.07% earlier today.
The US dollar had its worst monthly performance in four years against a basket of six major currencies, losing around 3.7% last month (remember our dollar was up around 4% against the greenback).
The euro had a very solid month, rising 4.7% in April – the best for more than four years. That’s despite hitting lows of around $1.05 against the greenback during the month. It was over $US1.12 this morning
In commodities, US oil prices rose on $US1.05, or 1.8%, to settle at $US59.63 a barrel in New York, up around 25% for the month—the biggest monthly gain since May 2009, while Brent crude added 21% for the month, settling around $US66.78 overnight – up 1.4% on the day.
New York gold futures lost just under 0.1% for April after a 2.3% slide overnight on Comex to settle at $1,182.40 an ounce (down $US27 an ounce).
Comex silver futures slumped 54.9 cents, or 3.3%, to $US16.153 an ounce, down around 2.7% over the month.
Comex copper futures jumped 3.1% overnight to end $US2.887 a pound, up more than 5% for the month.
And iron ore prices shed 1.7% overnight Thursday, after the 4.6% drop on Wednesday to end April on $US56.18 a tonne, according to data from the Metal Bulletin.
But prices were still up more than 9% for April and well above the 10 year low of $46.70 reached on April 2.
