The ASX will start wobbly today after wall Street ended a volatile session in the green but in unconvincing style.
After being up and down several times in the session, Wall Street’s major measures ended with small gains, which helped push the ASX 200 futures trade from an 11 point loss just before 5.30 am to a hesitant 8 point gain at the close.
Wall Street entered the final hour of the session mostly positive, dipped into the red, then recovered to close higher on the day.
The Dow rose 52.31 points, or 0.2%, to close at 26,815.44, after touching an intraday peak of 27,094.85. The S&P 500 edged up 9.67 points, or 0.3%, to end at 3,246.59, after earlier breaching a level below correction territory — defined as a drop of 10% from a recent peak — for the index at 3,222.76.
Nasdaq Composite Index added 39.28 points, or 0.4%, to finish at 10,672.27.
Stocks bounced around as investors waded through a morass of issues, including the continuing passions in the election campaigns, especially over a new Supreme Court justice and Trump’s statement that he will not go peacefully if defeated by Joe Biden.
As well there’s the lack of progress on another pandemic spending bill from Congress as weekly jobless claims data showed a small rise in the number of first time claimants.
Thursday’s jobless report showed that 870,000 workers filed for unemployment claims last week. That’s slightly more than the prior week and a little higher than economists had forecast.
The weekly jobless claims report from the Labor Department on Thursday also showed 26 million people were on unemployment benefits in early September. That’s a more accurate reading on the still persistently high level of unemployment in the US.
Oil prices rose for a third session on the mistaken belief US crude stocks are becoming tighter – they are not, nor are global reserves (which are one and the same these days because there is still a surplus of oil).
West Texas Intermediate crude for November delivery edged up by 38 cents, or nearly 1%, to settle at $US40.31 a barrel in New York touching a low at $US39.12.
In Europe, November Brent crude added 17 cents, or 0.4%, to trade at $US41.94 a barrel but turned lower in early Asian dealings.
Gold rose as the US dollar weakened slightly, but the metal remained under the key $US1,900 an ounce level.
Comex December gold rose by $US8.50, or nearly 0.5%, to settle at $US1,876.90 an ounce. Comex December silver turned early losses into a 9 cent gain for the session, a rise of 0.4% which saw it end at $US23.196 an ounce.
Comex December copper continuing to weaken for another session, dropping 0.8% to $US2.968 a pound.
The US dollar weakened a touch but it is still poised to be up around 1.5% this week against a basket of its major peers. If that happens it would be the biggest weekly rise for the greenback since April. The Aussie dollar was trading around 70.50 US cents in early Asian dealings on Friday.
