Only gold, the US dollar, and iron ore could claim bragging rights in red October as they finished with gains for what turned out to be a miserable 31 days of trading that was given a lift on the final two days with a nice rally on Wall Street.
Wall Street ended a rotten October with a two day bang – the Dow jumping 673 points on the last two days of the month, but Wednesday’s rise of around 242 points was half the session’s biggest gain, suggesting that investors could start November tonight with second thoughts with Apple due to release its important 4th quarter earnings details.
The S&P 500 rose 1.1% on Wednesday to end at 2,711.74, leaving the benchmark index down 6.9% for October.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 241.12 points, or 1%, to end at 25,115.76, a 5.1% fall for October fall.
The Nasdaq though jumped more than 2%, or 144.25 points on Wednesday to end the month at 7,305.90 – a loss of 9.2% for the month.
The big test for the Nasdaq, and indeed all of Wall Street comes tonight with the quarterly report from Apple (its final report for its 2017-18 financial year) – the report will be out just after 7 am Friday morning.
Yields on US bonds ended higher – the yield on the 10-year Treasury finishing at 3.149%, well above the peak of 3.263% hit three weeks ago, but up on the low of around 3.07% during the selling wave early last week. The yield finished September at 3.06%.
China’s CSI 300, which tracks the 300 biggest stocks on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, had its worst month since January 2016, when concerns about Chinese economic growth and a weakening renminbi triggered the worst start to a calendar year for global markets in decades.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, Japan’s Topix and Germany’s Dax also had their worst months since January 2016.
The Hang Seng chalked up a sixth consecutive month of declines that has also left it down by nearly a quarter from its January 26 peak. The index’s heavy weighting towards Tencent, the Chinese tech company, has not helped.
Taiwan’s stock exchange index, which is heavily weighted towards tech companies and chipmakers, had its worst month since October 2008.
The FTSE 100 had its worst month since August 2015.
For October, the Stoxx 600 index fell 5.8%, which was its worst monthly performance since a 6.4% fall in January 2016.
In commodities West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures lost around 10.8% for the month. Crude for December delivery fell 87 cents, or 1.3%, to settle at $US65.31 in New York.
In Europe, December Brent crude futures (which expired at the settlement), fell 44 cents, or 0.6%, to $US75.47 a barrel for a loss of about 8.8% for October.
Both Brent and WTI, which saw another settlement at their lowest in more than two months, suffered from the largest monthly percentage decline since July 2016.
US natural gas prices rose 8.4% in October as demand rose because of the approach of the northern winter.
The US dollar rose in August while the Aussie dipped from 72.24 to around 70.76 US cents, a fall of nearly half a cent over the month.
December gold fell $US10.30, or 0.8%, to settle at $US1,215 an ounce on Comex as Wall Street continued its solid two day end of rotten month rebound.
The fall still left gold up around 1.6% for the month.
Comex silver December silver lost 18 cents, or 1.2% on the last day of October, to settle at $US14.282 an ounce. The metal dropped 2.9% for the month.
Comex copper though had a typical month for markets, losing 5.2% to close at $US2.656 a pound in New York.
The price of 62% Fe iron ore in northern China rose 9% to $US75.71 a tonne over October. The price slumped 1.3%, or $US1 a tonne to $US75.71 on Wednesday.
That broke the steady rise in the price for most of October, an omen for November?
