ASX 200 futures lost 5 points or 0.1% overnight Friday, as the Aussie dollar rose (despite a stronger greenback) and most commodity prices dipped.
That means a flat to soft start for the Australian share market this morning after last week’s sharp rise which at 4.1%, was the third best weekly gain this year.
Friday saw a moderate day’s trading across the globe: our market was up 0.3%, many other markets in Asia also saw gains, Europe was divided with the Stoxx 600 index closing up 0.27% and US shares were up around 0.4%.
That was at the end of a week which started nervously after the terror attacks in Paris the previous Friday night. Those fears quickly faded and investors piled into stocks around the world, including Australian banks, energy stocks and miners.
That saw sharemarkets bouncing back over the rest of the week, helped along by a combination of reasonable earnings reports in the US, greater comfort around the Fed raising interest rates next month and increasing expectations of further easing by the European Central Bank next week.
Over the week US shares gained 3.3% (their best weekly gain this year), Eurozone shares were up 2.8%, Japanese shares rose 1.4% and Chinese shares also rose 1.4%.
The 4.1% rise in Australian shares was a particularly strong and broad based gain for the week as banks, retailers and major miners bounced, some sharply. The ASX 200 ended at just over 5,305 points.
On Wall Street the S&P 500 rose 7.93 points, or 0.4%, to 2,089.17, up 3.3% and the best weekly gain since the week ending December 19 last year, according to FactSet.
The Dow jumped 91.06 points, or 0.5%, to 17,823.81, and ended with a weekly gain of 3.4%.
And Nasdaq rose 31.28 points, or 0.6%, to 5,106.78. The index jumped 3.6% last week.
