A week of falls on global markets last week – US shares fell 1%, Eurozone shares lost 2.6%, Japanese shares dropped 2.4% and Chinese shares fell 1.7%.
US tech stocks took a whacking, especially towards the end of the week and Amazon’s move above $US1 trillion market value didn’t last very long.
The global sell-off caught up with Australia last week, especially in tech stocks and rattled confidence (see separate story).
As a result Australian shares also got hit and fell 2.8% to their lowest since June.
While the iron ore price rose, oil and metal prices fell, especially copper.
The $A fell to its lowest since early 2016 on the back of strong US jobs data and ongoing trade threats from Donald Trump which whacked confidence on Wall Street on Friday.
The Dow shed 79.33 points to end lower at 25,916.54, a loss of 0.3% on the day.
The S&P 500 index fell 6.37 points, or 0.2%, to end at 2,871.68, while the Nasdaq Composite slid 20.18 points, or 0.3%, to 7,902.54.
For the week, the Dow edged down 0.2%, the S&P 500 shed 1%, and the Nasdaq slumped 2.6%.
US Government bonds sold off sharply owing to Friday’s good jobs figures which showed more than 200,000 new jobs were created last month and wages rose to an annual 2.9% rate, the highest for six years. The jobless rate remains steady at 3.9%.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury was up 6.4 basis points at a one-month high of 2.9406%. The yield on the two-year Treasury, which is more sensitive to Fed policy was up 6.6 bps at 2.7066%. Investors are still worried about the size of the gap between the yield on 10-year bonds and the two-year note.
The S&P technology sector fell 2.9% last week. Among the major losers were Microsoft shares which fell 3.7%, Google-parent Alphabet slid 4.4%. Facebook Ishares slumped 7.2%.
Amazon shares fell 3%, dragging the company’s value under $US1 trillion to around $US995 billion by the close on Friday. And shares in Apple eased 2.8% with the company’s value ending a tough week at $US1.08 trillion ahead of this week’s annual new product, iPhone update.
