Apart from worries about the inflation rate and interest rates, there’s nothing in the way of our market reaching another record ahead of the ANZAC Day holiday midweek.
Wall Street surged on Friday, gold, copper and oil led commodities mostly higher and the SPI is pointing to a 50 point rise at the opening after the Dow rose 153 points early Saturday.
The Aussie dollar finished around 83.40 USc, off a touch from the highs of over 83.70 last week and will jump sharply if the CPI figures show a rise greater than 0.6 per cent for the quarter to the end of March and an annual rate over 3.1 per cent.
Anything better will produce a fall in the dollar because the pressure will be off interest rates.
The Dow moved to within sight of the 13,000 point mark for the first time, coming within 35 points of that historic level.
The Dow rose 153.35 to almost 12,962 points and ended up 2.8 per cent. The S&P 500 1484 added almost 1 per cent and hit a new six and a half year high. For the week, the S&P rose 2.2 per cent.
And the tech-heavy NASDAQ also hit a fresh 6-year high and finished about 1.4 per cent higher over the week at 2,526 points.
Oil jumped nearly $2, the dollar gained on the euro and yen, and bonds held steady at 4.67 per cent for the 10 year US Government bond.
Here the Australian stock market ended the week in positive territory, buoyed by strong gains from the financial and resources sectors.
The S&P/ASX200 index was up 42.4 points to 6207.5 points on Friday, while the all-ordinaries gained 38.9 points to 6187.2: both new record highs.
On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the June share price contract was 44 points higher by the close Friday and up another 50 on Saturday morning.
