The Australian stockmarket looks headed for another day of gains today after a solid close to trading on Wall Street on Friday saw the ASX 200 futures price end with a five point gain.
While not a convincing end, it nevertheless positions the market to continue the advance started nearly three weeks ago.
Australian shares ended a two-week rally with another rise on Friday, with the benchmark top 200 index closing over the final session above 5,900 for the first time since May.
Friday’s session saw the ASX 200 index advance 10 points, or 0.2%, to 5,907, while the All Ordinaries rose 8 points, or 0.1%, at 5,968 and within a whisker of its post-GFC highs.
The ASX 200 was up 1.6% over the week, building on a 1.8% in the prior week. Since the current rally kicked off on October 5, the main market measure has jumped close to 200 points, or 4.5% – or well over $100 billion across the wider market.
The rise in Australia matched gains offshore last week.
US shares added 0.9% boosted by progress towards tax reform, Japanese shares rose 1.4%, Chinese shares were up 0.2% and Eurozone shares were flat with Spanish shares slipping as the Spanish Government looks to be moving towards taking over the Catalan Government.
The government stepped up pressure on the Catalans at the weekend and Spanish and eurozone shares will be under pressure early on, along with the value of the euro.
Bond yields rose in the US and Europe but fell in the UK and Australia. Oil and metal prices rose but the iron ore price was flat over the week (See separate story). The $A fell as the $US rose on the back of progress towards US tax reform.
Eurozone shares gained 0.2% on Friday and the US market was up half a per cent.
In fact Wall Street closed at record highs with its weekly gains powered by a rally in financials and healthcare stocks and buoyed by optimism on tax reform.
The S&P 500 ended the day 0.5% higher at 2,575.21 taking its weekly gain to 0.9%. It was the sixth consecutive week of gains and matched the longest weekly winning streak for the S&P 500 since March.
The Dow was up 165.59 points, or 0.7%, to 23,328.63, for a weekly gain of 2%.
IBM was the biggest weekly gainer on the share price-weighted Dow, rising 10.2%. General Electric shares rose nearly 4% by Friday, despite reporting a terrible quarterly report.
Despite that, this is the longest stretch of weekly gains for the Dow since a seven-week rally that ended in December.
The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.5% on the day to 6,629.05 — taking the weekly gain to 0.4%.
The dollar index, a measure of the buck against a basket of peers, rose 0.7% over the week to 93.69. Meanwhile, the yield on the US 10-year Treasury, rose 6.5 basis points to 2.383%. The Aussie dollar closed around 78.20 US cents.
