Daily Updates

US stocks started the new week with a retreat, following a streak of gains in the previous trading days. Investors were digesting a quite discouraging ISM manufacturing PMI report, which pointed to further contraction in activity overall and employment, but also led to faster growth in prices.

US stocks continued to climb in thin trading during the shortened session on Friday. This followed an outage at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange caused by a data centre fault, which disrupted pre-market activity. Market sentiment remained supported by hopes for more monetary policy easing from the Fed.

It was a relatively quiet night on global financial markets, with US markets closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. European equities rose for the fourth day in a row, with the Stoxx 600 edging up 0.1% following a mixed session in the Asia-Pacific region. At home, the ASX 200 gave up most of yesterday’s early gains to close 0.2% higher and is marginally higher in early trade this morning.

US stocks continued their ascent last night, as traders remained confident that the Fed will cut rates in December. The S&P 500 is just 1.1% off its record high from a month ago, though the tech-heavy Nasdaq is still a 3.4% below its peak. US Treasury yields were little changed, while the US dollar depreciated.

The broad-based increases on Wall Street continued on Tuesday night, as a set of US data brought more arguments in favour of continued monetary policy easing by the FOMC.

US equities saw further gains last night, while US Treasury yields declined slightly further, amid more dovish Fedspeak.