The Australian market will start the week line ball after an inconclusive end to a volatile week early Saturday morning that left the ASX futures market basically flat.
Markets here and around the world will be dominated by the Brexit vote in the UK on Thursday night our time. If it is a close vote the full results probably won’t be known until Friday afternoon our time.
That was after a better day on Friday in Asia (and Australia) and Europe which failed to carryover into the US.
The Japanese market rose 1% on Friday after a big sell-off earlier in the week, while eurozone shares rose 1.2% as those Brexit fears receded a bit, but the US S&P 500 fell 0.3% led down by technology and health care shares.
ASX 200 futures were unchanged pointing to a flat start here later today – there was little help from gold, while oil prices bounced more than 4%, but had no impact on equities.
Over the week, US shares fell 1.2%, eurozone shares lost 2.4%, Japanese shares shed 6%, Chinese shares lost 1.7% and Australian shares fell 3.7%.
The fall in bond yields saw German 10 year yields fall briefly below zero for the first time and Australian 10 year bond yields fall briefly below 2% to a new record low.
The Australian dollar was little changed around 73.85 US cents.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones lost 58.07 points, or 0.3%, to close at 17,675.03, to be down 1.1% for the week. The S&P 500 slid 6.76 points, or 0.3%, to finish at 2,071.23 for a weekly drop of 1.2%.
And the Nasdaq dropped 44.58 points, or 0.9%, to end at 4,800.34 to be off 1.9% for the week, its biggest weekly slide since the end of April.
European stocks finished higher Friday, with investors reassessing the prospect of Britain leaving the EU in the wake of the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox by a right wing gunman.
The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 1.4% to 325.76, with all sectors pushing higher. But the index lost 2.1% last week for the third weekly fall in a row.
Germany’s DAX 30 added 1% to 9,631.36 and France’s CAC 40 was up 1.1% at 10,284. Italy’s FTSE MIB bounced 3.5% to 16,923.29 and Spain’s IBEX 35 added 2% to 8,362 in what was the most buoyant day’s trading in Europe for several weeks.
Stocks in Japan rose from a four-month low and led most Asian markets higher on Friday. The Nikkei Stock Average closed up 1.1%, while the Hang Seng Index was up 0.7%, the Shanghai Composite Index ended up 0.4% and Australia’s ASX 200 finished up 0.3%.
Besides the 6% slide in the Nikkei, Hong Kong lost more than 4%, while the Shanghai finished down 1.4%.
