ASX to come under pressure as overseas stock markets lose momentum
The Australian sharemarket faced headwinds on Thursday after finishing down 22 points or 0.4% on Wednesday.
There was a late sell-off in the US with the Dow trading in very similar fashion to the previous day.
The index shed around 200 points in the last hour of trading, partly triggered by disturbing data regarding the wiping of 20.2 million jobs in April. Some analysts are tipping that the unemployment rate could come in at around 15% as this continues to unfold.
President Donald Trump summed the situation up yesterday in his own inimitable style in saying ‘’it is a very bad subject’’ — the words of a true statesman.
Given this backdrop it isn’t surprising to see the SPI200 ASX futures down 48 points to 5348 points.
24 hours
In Asia, the Hang Seng was up 1.1% or 288 points to 24,137 points.
The Shanghai Composite rallied strongly late in the day to gained 0.6%, closing at 2878 points.
Similar to the Dow, the FTSE 100 endured a late session sell-off. It closed four points higher at 5803 points, but earlier in the day had pushed up towards the 5900 point mark.
The DAX and the CAC 40 were both off about 1.1% closing at 10,606 and 4433 points respectively.
The Dow started the day strongly, touching on 24,050 points before plummeting nearly 400 points to close at 23,664 points, a fall of 0.9%.
The S&P 500 was down 20 points to 2848 points.
The NASDAQ bucked the trend, gaining 45 points or 0.5% to close at 8854 points.
As markets unravelled, the CBOE Volatility Index gained traction, increasing from 32 points to 34 points during afternoon trading.
There was little support to be had on the commodities front with both gold and oil falling substantially, the former losing some of its previous day’s gains to close around the US$30.00 per barrel mark.
Gold fell 1.4% to US$1686 per ounce, its lowest close in a month.
The Australian dollar slipped below the US$0.64 mark for the first time in a fortnight.
On the base metals front, zinc surged overnight, and it is now close to the 60 day high of US$0.90 per pound.
There was also good support for nickel as it increased from US$5.40 per pound to US$5.52 per pound.
Where to invest $1,000 right now
Short-term positions in small, early stage ASX companies,
with high potential and near term price catalysts.
Focusing on resource exploration, early-stage tech, and biotech.
Exceptional opportunities across a broad range of
early-stage growth sectors with strong management.
Seeking 1,000% plus returns across medium to long-term holds.
Longer-term positions in a variety of sectors.
Seeking strong management where traction
is established and have entered into a growth phase.
S3 Consortium Pty Ltd (CAR No.433913) is a corporate authorised representative of LeMessurier Securities Pty Ltd (AFSL No. 296877). The information contained in this article is general information only. Any advice is general advice only. Neither your personal objectives, financial situation nor needs have been taken into consideration. Accordingly you should consider how appropriate the advice (if any) is to those objectives, financial situation and needs, before acting on the advice.
Conflict of Interest Notice
S3 Consortium Pty Ltd does and seeks to do business with companies featured in its articles. As a result, investors should be aware that the Firm may have a conflict of interest that could affect the objectivity of this article. Investors should consider this article as only a single factor in making any investment decision. The publishers of this article also wish to disclose that they may hold this stock in their portfolios and that any decision to purchase this stock should be done so after the purchaser has made their own inquires as to the validity of any information in this article.
Publishers Notice
The information contained in this article is current at the finalised date. The information contained in this article is based on sources reasonably considered to be reliable by S3 Consortium Pty Ltd, and available in the public domain. No “insider information” is ever sourced, disclosed or used by S3 Consortium.
