The ASX is looking at a solid rise later this morning after Wall Street ended higher on the news of a very strong jobs report for November.
Locally the rise in oil prices will be positive, but the sharp fall in gold prices will see gold shares sold off.
The report the US economy added 266,000 jobs in November, the largest increase in 10 months while the jobless rate fell to a low of 3.5%, the same as in September and the lowest in 46 years.
The jobs report helped produce a positive lead in offshore markets that saw eurozone shares end up 1.2% on Friday and the US S&P 500 jumped 0.9%.
More talk of progress in US/China trade talks added to the sentiment while a decision by OPEC and Russia to boost the size of their production cap for a few months next year helped energy stocks rise which in turn added to the bullish tone.
Reflecting this positive global ASX 200 futures rose 35 points, or 0.5%, pointing to a positive start to trade for the Australian share markets later this morning
That will be after the ASX 200 rose 24 points or 0.4% on Friday to end at 6,707 – down sharply from the record high of 6,888 hit on Monday.
One event to look forward to this week will be the Westpac annual meeting on Thursday. It should be a noisy affair.
The UK general election that night will also be a big deal, along with the final 2019 meeting of the US Federal Reserve the day before.
But the local market still lost 2% last week and was not able to recover the big 3% plus losses on Tuesday and Wednesday. The index gained 24 points on Friday to 6,707, but this was down from the record high of 6,888 tapped on Monday.
Undermining the market was the weak third-quarter GDP figures and the news that household spending only rose 0.1% in the quarter. Weak retail sales figures on Thursday (downing a fall in October) were ignored on Thursday and Friday.
For the week US shares were up 0.2% (for the S&P 500 only) and Friday’s rise saw the loss in the Stoxx 600 index in Europe cut to just 0.2%. Japanese shares added 0.3% partly on the back of on a $US121 billion stimulus plan while Chinese shares rose 1.9%.
Bond yields rose including in Australia as did commodity prices with oil prices up 7.3% with Saudi Arabia announcing a cut in its own oil production over and above an agreed OPEC production cut of 500,000 barrels a day to a nominal 1.7 million barrels a day but more like 2.1 million with Saudi Arabia’s voluntary cuts.
The Australian dollar rose as the US dollar fell and ended up three-quarters of a cent at 68.40 US cents.
On Wall Street, Friday saw the Dow notch up its best day since October 4, while the S&P 500 posted its best percentage gain since Nov. 1 and Nasdaq also had a solid gain.
The Dow jumped 337.27 points, or 1.22%, to 28,015.06, the S&P 500 rose 28.48 points, or 0.91%, to 3,145.91 and Nasdaq added 85.83 points, or 1%, to 8,656.53.
For the week, the Dow and Nasdaq lost 0.1%, while the S&P 500 edged up by just 0.2%.
