The ASX is heading for a flat start to trading today, although another rise in iron ore prices on Friday might provide an early spark, as might the approval of a COVID-19 vaccine in the US on Friday night.
Eurozone shares fell 0.9% on Friday and the US S&P 500 dipped 0.1%, leaving the ASX 200 futures price off a tiny one point, meaning a flat start.
The ASX 200 lost 0.61% by the close on Friday at 6,642.6 while the All Ordinaries Index retreated 0.44% to 6,886.4.
News of the approval of the Pfizer vaccine came well after US trading ended, so that will help markets in Asia which will be the first to react to the news today.
The first vaccinations in the US will start within days.
But Donald Trump continues to try to cling to power even though his conservative stacked Supreme Court threw out a hare-brained challenge from Texas and other Republican states and more than 100 Republican members of Congress.
It was a swift, decisive rejection by the court which said Texas didn’t have a case and had no standing anyway.
But Trump and his supporters are continuing to undermine US democracy with their claims the election wasn’t fair (That’s despite the same election having elected many of the Republicans now claiming there was fraud).
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended lower on Friday, while the Dow closed up slightly. All three indexes fell for the week.
The Dow rose 47.11 points, or 0.16%, to 30,046.37, the S&P 500 lost 4.64 points, or 0.13%, to 3,663.46 and the Nasdaq shed 27.94 points, or 0.23%, to 12,377.87.
For the week, the Dow lost 0.57%, the S&P 500 lost 0.96% and the Nasdaq eased 0.69%. The fall for the S&P and Nasdaq marked their biggest weekly declines since the end of October.
Eurozone shares fell 1.3%, Japanese shares lost 0.4% and Chinese shares fell 3.5%, despite more evidence that the economy is going well with a record trade surplus last month and exports.
Despite this, Australian shares rose for the sixth week in a row, albeit it was only a small gain of 0.1%, with a surge in the iron ore price and higher oil prices pulling up resource stocks along with good gains in IT and consumer discretionary stocks offsetting weakness in property, industrial and retail shares.
Bond yields eased but oil, metal and iron ore prices rose. The surge in commodity prices, notably iron ore, drove the $A above 75 US cents to close at 75.33 US cents.
