That fall in iron ore prices on Friday and last week will weigh on the wider market and mining stocks in particular (BHP, Rio and Fortescue) when ASX trading resumes later this morning.
Trading is likely to be constrained by the holiday in China today (and tomorrow) and holidays in the UK and the US tonight, our time.
For that reason iron ore prices won’t move very much with only the small futures market in Singapore operating today and tomorrow.
The Metal Bulletin price fell under $US60 for the first time this year on Friday to be down 7.6% for the week and more than 17% for the month so far.
The fall didn’t impact the value of the Aussie dollar which finished the week close to $74.50 US cents, all but unchanged from the previous week.
Overnight trading on the ASX 200 futures left the indicator up 7 points – pointing to a small gain later this morning, but the lower iron ore price seems to have been missed by investors.
Eurozone shares fell 0.1% on Friday and the US S&P 500 rose just 0.03%.
Overall, share markets rose over the last week, reversing the Trump FBI/Russia slump from the previous week. US shares rose 1.4%, Eurozone shares rose 0.04%, Japanese shares gained 0.5%, Chinese shares rose 2.3% and Australian shares gained 0.4%.
The gains in Australian shares were constrained by ongoing worries about the banks and retail shares.
On Wall Street the gains on Friday were miniscule. The S&P 500 index gained 0.75 of a point, or less than 0.1%, to finish at a fresh all-time high at 2014.82.
The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 4.94 points, or 0.1%, to notch a record at 6,210.19.
But the Dow ended 2.67 points, or less than 0.1%, lower at 21,080.28, a tiny loss, just 0.2% away from its own all-time high.
For the week, the Dow is gained 1.3%, the S&P 500 advanced 1.4%, and the Nasdaq had a nice 2.1% weekly gain.
In Australia on Friday, the ASX 200 fell sharply, but remained in the black for the week.
The ASX 200 shed 0.7% to 5751.7 on Friday, taking the weekly gain to 0.4%, while the All Ordinaries also rose by the same amount.
