Originally published by Originally published by Rivkin Securities
After three days of declines, US stock markets opened lower on Friday morning but managed to rally throughout the rest of the session. While the Dow Jones Industrial Average didn’t make it back to positive, the S&P 500 did, closing up 0.5% and snapping the three day losing streak. During last week, one of the main market moving events was Trump’s ramping up of his rhetoric surrounding planned trade tariffs. Trump has no compunctions about who the tariffs apply to as he believes they would be good for American manufacturing, which has been in decline for many years now. Regardless, the stock market seems concerned having closed lower last week.
Bond yields rose again with the 10-year yield back up to 2.86% while commodities were generally lower. Oil prices are still relatively weak as climbing inventories over the past couple of weeks has weighed on the market. WTI oil is currently trading at $61.65 although this is still off the February lows of below $60 per barrel.
This week, a range of Australian economic data is released including retail sales data and current account on Tuesday, GDP on Wednesday and Trade Balance on Thursday. The big event of the week, however, will be the interest rate decision following the RBA meeting tomorrow. Market participants will be looking for hints of when the RBA will look to begin raising rates.
Data Releases:
- Australia Company Operating Profits 11:30am AEDT