There’s no doubt and little surprise some fatigue has crept into the markets, and we are looking at a sluggish start to the ASX today after Wall Street and shares in Europe ended marginally higher Friday.
The Aussie and other markets in Asia will be the first to trade off the news of a final agreement from the climate change talkfest in Glasgow – the watering down of proposals to phase out coal will see interest in local coal stocks.
The developed economies (perhaps not Australia) will work to end coal, but the likes of China and India will continue to keep coal fired generating capacity for decades to come – especially India.
But the real activity will continue in the growing group of companies in green technologies, minerals, smelting and associated processes.
Eurozone shares rose 0.3% on Friday and the US S&P 500 added 0.7% thanks to a bounce in tech stocks (with the exception of Tesla).
But having already risen by a sharp 0.8% on Friday, ASX 200 futures lost 3 points at the end of the week meaning a weak beginning to trading today.
Friday’s gain couldn’t eliminate the week’s loss of 0.2%, so the Aussie market ended like many others – down and a bit whacked by the high inflation readings from the US and China (though investors there didn’t worry).
The Shanghai Composite recovered 1.3%, the CSI 300 ended up 1%, the Hang Seng in Hong Kong followed suit and added 2.36% but the Nikkei in Tokyo eased 0.40%.
In Europe, the CAC40 added 1.2%, the Dax gained 0.4%, the Footsie 0.6% and the Stoxx 600 added 0.7% for the week.
Bond yields mostly rose on the back of inflation concerns with the yield on the key 10 US bond ending around 1.566%. up from 1.45% the previous Friday.
The US Dollar weakened a little on Friday and that saw the Aussie dollar regain and end well over the 73 US cent mark at 73.30. That was still down 1% from the previous Friday.
The iron ore price fell to new lows during the week around $US89 a tonne for 62% Fe fines, but it finished the week just above $US89 a tonne. and oil prices fell but metal prices rose. The $A fell as the $US rose.
On Wall Street inflationary fears and the rise of the dollar weighed on momentum, as well as the antics of Elon Musk in asking his followers on twitter should he sell shares, and then selling them in a series of pre-arranged sales totalling nearly $US7 billion (including $US1.2 billion worth on Friday).
Tesla suffered its biggest one-week slide outside the pandemic sell off in February and March last year and newbie Rivian hit the boards as the biggest new float of the year and ended its three-day trading life up 66%.
Friday saw the Dow rise 179.08 points, or 0.5%, to close at 36,100.31, the S&P 500 gain about 0.7% at end at 4,682.85 but the Nasdaq jumped 1% at close at 15,860.96.
Despite the bright Friday, The Dow and the S&P500 lost respectively 0.6% and 0.3% over the last five days and the Nasdaq 0.7%.
