The big banks again rattled the ASX yesterday, crushing an early rally and eventually dragging the market down to within sight of a fall for the day after being up 1% in early trading.
Those dovish comments from Fed chair Janet Yellen that the Fed would proceed cautiously in increasing US interest rates boosted Wall Street and then Asian markets in early dealings.
That helped markets across the region to open higher and then rise. Australia had early gains as a result.
The big banks rallied at the start, shaking off the sell down of Tuesday and last Friday.
The CBA rose 1.3%, ANZ 1%, NAB 1.8% and Westpac 1.6% and the ASX 200 peaked at 5059.
Then market faded and the banks ended mixed with the Commonwealth closing up 0.3% to $73.31, as did National Australia Bank, 0.1% to $25.64.
But the ANZ lost 0.4% per cent to $23.11, for a sixth straight fall, and Westpac Banking Corporation eased 0.1% to $29.89.
ANZ announced during the day it would refund $5 million to 25,000 low income customers after it failed to properly apply fee reductions and wavers to some card holders.
The NAB, ANZ and Westpac rule off their half year accounts tonight, our time and report in a month’s time.
We can expect the prices to bounce around a lot until the actual figures are released, along with the Bank of Queensland (which balances at the end of February).
Macquarie Group also closes its books for its 2015-16 financial year and then reports in around four week.
Investors are looking for a result above $1.6 billion and a positive outlook for the first half of 2016-17.
