Australian shares started the day slightly higher despite a gauge of global shares falling on Friday to end the trading week on a lower note after five consecutive sessions of gains.
Key points:
- The ASX 200 has lost 8.7% since the start of the year
- On Friday, the Dow Jones fell 0.4%, the S&P 500 lost 0.9% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.9%
- Meanwhile, the pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.3%.
The ASX 200 was up 7.5 points or 0.1% to 6,799 at 10:14am AEST.
At the same time, the Australian dollar fell to 69.06 US cents.
The utilities sector led the gains, while academic stocks were the benchmark’s biggest laggards at the open.
Flight Center rose 3.4 percent and Bega Cheese firmed 2.4 percent, while EMl Payments fell 13.8 percent.
Wall Street posted modest losses in early trading on Friday, but declines in the S&P 500 accelerated as Big Tech names like Meta and Alphabet lost ground on earnings from Snap Inc, which fell 39, 1 percent
Defensive sectors such as utilities and consumer staples were among the few to advance.
“In every rally we’ve had during this bear market, there’s been a series of strong rallies and then fades and we’ve made new lows, and that’s been a pretty consistent pattern here,” Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at ‘Ingalls & Snyder. in New York, he said.
“Everyone is looking for the turn, everyone is trying to guess when we have a sustained rally and everyone is waiting for one. But for me, there is still a lot of unknowns ahead.”
With 106 of the S&P 500 companies reporting earnings through Friday morning, 75.5% had beaten analysts’ expectations, down from an 81% beat rate over the past four quarters, according to Refinitiv data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 138 points, or 0.4%, to 31,899, the S&P 500 lost 37 points, or 0.9%, to 3,962 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 226 points, or 1 .9%, up to 11,834.
For the week, the Dow advanced nearly 2 percent, the S&P 500 gained 2.6 percent and the Nasdaq rose 3.3 percent.
Gains in the Dow and S&P marked their biggest weekly percentage gains in four.
Recent data has shown signs of a slowing economy, but the Federal Reserve is still expected to raise US interest rates by 75 basis points at its inflation-fighting policy meeting.
On Thursday, the European Central Bank (ECB) raised rates by 50 basis points after weeks of signaling a 25 basis point hike on the horizon.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index closed down 0.3 percent and MSCI’s gauge of shares worldwide was down 0.4 percent after rising to 624, its highest level since June 10.
The MSCI index rose 3.1 percent for the week and the STOXX 600 hit its biggest weekly gain in two months, partly as worries about a potential energy crisis eased.
In the oil markets, Brent crude rose to trade at $104.03 a barrel at 10:24am AEST.
ABC/Reuters