Thanks to a late rally on Friday night, Wall Street ended in the green for the day, but not the week.
Friday’s bounce (the S&P 500 was down 1.6% at one stage) limited the week’s decline to 2.2%, but Eurozone shares lost 3.6% on fears about a deepening of the existing trade tensions with the US in the wake of the escalation by Donald Trump of his trade war with China.
Japanese shares fell 4.1% and Chinese shares lost 4.7% (understandable). Australian shares were sort of resilient though falling only 0.4%, helped by gains in utilities, property stocks, telcos, and some resources stocks.
Commodity prices were mixed with oil and metals down but iron ore jumped more than 4% on ongoing supply disruptions. The $A ended around $US0.70.
On Wall Street The Dow rose 114.01 points, or 0.44%, to 25,942.37, the S&P 500 added 10.68 points, or 0.37%, to 2,881.4 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 6.35 points, or 0.08%, to 7,916.94.
For the week, the Dow fell 2.12%, the S&P 500 declined 2.17% and the Nasdaq shed 3.03%.
Analysts said investors were confident that the trade war with China would not deepen, despite the higher tariffs coming into force on Friday but not applying for around a month to exempt goods already on the water.
Several US stocks stood on Friday.
Uber Technologies shares listed on Friday and dropped 7.6% to $US41.57 after having opened below their initial public offering price of $US45 in the ride-hailing company’s long-awaited market debut.
Shares in Lyft, Uber’s smaller rival continuing their fall after listing at $US72. Lyft shares fell 7.4% to $US52.51. The shares fell more than 18% last week and the $US15.7 billion valuation is down 27% from its listing.
The Wall Street Journal pointed out that at its issue price Uber was valued at roughly $US82 billion on a fully diluted basis, below indications of a $US90 billion to $US100 billion valuation. Last year, the company’s bankers Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs estimated its value at $US120 billion.
At Friday’s close, it was valued at just over $US75 billion.
Symantec Corp shares plunged 12.5% after the antivirus software maker issued a profit downgrade and revealed its chief executive officer was leaving the company. Problems ahead for the $US14 billion company best known for its security and anti-virus software.
