The Australian market will be looking to reverse the late week sell off on Thursday and Friday when trading resumes on the ASX this morning after solid gains in Europe and the US overnight Friday.
But Australia, Asia and Europe will be flying solo today and tonight with Wall Street closed for the Labor Day holiday, meaning there won’t be any real leads for investors to follow.
So that 35 point gain might happen, but it is unlikely to go much further until Wall Street clocks back on Tuesday night, our time.
The weaker than expected US jobs report for August saw attitudes change about the path for US interest rates and share price rose accordingly in Europe and the US on Friday night.
As a result eurozone shares gained 1.8% on Friday night and the US S&P 500 rose 0.4% after the softer than expected August jobs report reduced the belief that US rates will rise later this month.
Iron ore and oil prices were firmer as well on Friday night and that helped ASX 200 futures to add 35 points or 0.7% on Friday night pointing to a positive open for the Australian share market this morning.
In fact, global shares rose solidly over the last week with Japanese shares up 3.5% helped by talk of more monetary easing and a fall in the yen. Eurozone shares added 1.9%,
US shares were up 0.5% and Chinese shares rose 0.2%.
But Australian shares lost 2.6% though as the earnings reporting season came to an end, with the losses on Thursday and Friday totalling 1.1%.
That was the third weekly loss in a row.
Bond yields dipped in the US, were unchanged in Australia but rose in Europe and Japan.
While the rising $US impacted some commodity prices (but not on Friday), the Australian dollar rose marginally.
On Wall Street the S&P 500 rose 9.1 points, or 0.4%, to 2,179.96. The Dow was up 72.2 points, or 0.4%, to 18,491.52, while the Nasdaq rose 22.69 points, or 0.4%, to 5,249.9.
For the week, both the Dow and the S&P rose 0.5% while the Nasdaq ended with a gain of 0.6%.
And watch Apple on Wednesday US time – not for more on the Irish tax wrangle, but it releases its new iPhone 7 model, a rumoured new iWatch and several other upgrades.
In Australia, the market will be digesting the recent reporting season and the new from the US jobs report.
The S&P/ASX 200 index lost 0.8 per cent on Friday to close at 5372.8, its sixth session in the red out of the past seven.
The index has now dropped three weeks in a row as the wave of selling grows and has lost about 4.3% since its brief foray above 5,600 points at the beginning of August following that strong rally in July and a 6.3% jump.
