Worries about inflation and the sliding cryptocurrency market thanks to Chinese Government intervention will dominate financial markets again this week.
While Eurozone shares rose 0.6% on Friday, Wall Street saw the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fall marginally, while the Dow finished in the green.
There was further taper talk by hawkish Fed officials in public appearances last week (and in the Fed’s latest minutes). More appearances by Fed officials are due this week while a key inflation measure favoured by the Fed will be issued on Friday and is forecast to show the annual rate hitting 3% in April.
Friday’s soft US lead saw ASX 200 futures fall 5 points or 0.1%, pointing to a weakish start to trade for the Australian share market today.
Weakness in cryptocurrencies continued after another strong warning from the Chinese government saw Bitcoin lose more ground.
Trading continues 24/7 so the price Monday morning could be very different to where it was on Friday night and Saturday – close to or under $US30,000 a token.
The ASX 200 added 10.7 points or 0.2% on Friday to close at 7,030.3.
The ASX 200 nosed 16.1 points ahead for the week, adding 0.2% across the five days.
The weekly rise came after the market recovered on Thursday from Wednesday’s $A41 billion slide.
A lowlight of Friday’s trading was online retailer Kogan.com whose shares plunged 14.3% to $8.70 on an earnings downgrade and stock and sales problems.
Share markets had a bit of a rough ride last week with inflation fears continuing to impact along with taper talk in the US and perhaps some impact from the fall in crypto currencies forcing speculators in them to sell shares to help cover margin calls on their crypto losses, according to the AMP’s Shane Oliver.
This left US shares down 0.4% for the week, but Eurozone shares were up 0.3%, Japanese shares rose 0.8% and Chinese shares gained 0.5%.
Bond yields actually fell, and commodity prices were soft with metal and iron ore prices down and oil prices down on reports of progress in US/Iranian talks to return to the nuclear deal and end sanctions on Iran. That would see more oil appear in global markets.
The Aussie dollar fell despite a further fall in the greenback.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 lost earlier gains and finished Friday nearly flat as the tech sector came under pressure again amid another drop in bitcoin price.
The index closed down less than 0.1% to 4,155.86 after rising as much as 0.7% earlier in the day. The Dow added 123.69 points, or 0.4%, to 34,207.84, thanks to a jump in Boeing shares. The Nasdaq Composite lost 0.5% to 13,470.99.
For the week, the S&P 500 fell 0.4% to register for its first back-to-back weekly losses since February. The Dow eased 0.5% on the week, while the Nasdaq saw a rise of 0.3%, breaking a four-week losing streak.
