Falling $US sees commodity price rises: All eyes on Friday’s job data
The Dow Jones fell Thursday, relinquishing some of the big gains seen in the prior session as investors awaited jobs data coming Friday that could determine the pace of the Federal Reserve’s future rate tightening.
Investors are looking to data on non-farm payrolls, the unemployment rate and hourly wages on Friday for insight into the labour market, which has been relatively strong despite hopes of contraction as the Fed looks to cool inflation.
The 30-stock index dropped 187 points, or 0.6 per cent, following a 737-point gain on Wednesday. The S&P 500 was near flat, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.1 per cent.
Helping to drag down the Dow, shares of Salesforce tumbled more than 8 per cent after the software company said its co-CEO would be stepping down soon.
Costco shares dropped more than 6 per cent after November sales slowed an ominous sign during the peak holiday selling season. The wholesale retailer also reported a 10.1 per cent decline in e-commerce sales during the period.
Commodities rallied overnight on the back of a falling $US. Gold prices jumped more than 3 per cent and silver rallied over 5 per cent as the dollar weakened on prospects of slower rate hikes from the Federal Reserve and signs of cooling U.S. inflation.
Across the sectors tech remains well supported – a noticeable change in trend from previous months.
And it seems that ESG investment mandates are becoming a political football as Florida announced it will pull $2 billion worth of state assets managed by BlackRock Inc., accelerating Republicans’ fight with the world’s largest money manager over its ESG investing practices. The pullback is the latest step in a broader fight led by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis against corporations that embrace environmental, social and corporate governance values.
And the EU has warned Elon Musk yesterday that Twitter could be banned in Europe unless it follows the strict content moderation rules imposed by a new law. This comes post Musk complaining about Apple’s app store this week – overnight it was Mark Zuckerberg’s turn.“ Zuckerburg said that Apple had too much power as a gatekeeper for apps in its marketplace. Compared with other platforms like Google Play or Windows, and said, Apple “is the only one where one company can control what apps get on the device,” and that is not “sustainable or good.”
Meta’s stock price is down more than 60 percent this year as revenues fall amid a broad digital advertising slump. Another factor hitting the firm: Privacy features introduced by Apple last year have made it more difficult for social media apps like Facebook to target their users with ads.
Futures
The SPI futures are pointing to a 0.2 per cent fall.
Currency
One Australian dollar at 8:10 AM has strengthened compared to the US dollar yesterday buying 68.11 US cents (Thu: 67.87 US cents).
Commodities
Iron ore futures are pointing to a 0.1 per cent fall. Gold gained 3.3 per cent. Silver jumped 5.6 per cent. Copper rose 1.6 per cent and oil gained 0.9 per cent.
Figures around the globe
Across the Atlantic, European markets closed mixed. Paris added 0.2 per cent, Frankfurt rose 0.7 per cent and London’s FTSE closed 0.2 per cent lower.
In Asian markets, Tokyo’s Nikkei gained 0.9 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.8 per cent and China’s Shanghai Composite added 0.5 per cent.
Yesterday, the Australian sharemarket gained almost 1 per cent to close at 7354.
Sources: Bloomberg, FactSet, IRESS, TradingView, UBS, Bourse Data, Trading Economics, CoinMarketCap.
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