Following positive leads from US markets, the Australian share market looks set to open higher. Wall street had a volatile day as the major benchmarks briefly hit session lows before surging up late in the session. Amazon gained 1.5 per cent in late trade after Bloomberg reported that the Whitehouse had no plans to take action against the company. Netflix and Facebook also made small gains while Nike was the best performing stock in the Dow Jones. Spotify made its debut on the exchange ending trade up around 13 per cent on the US reference price.
On the commodities front, oil gained as did base metals such copper and nickel while gold has dropped to a two day low.
Local economic news: The retail trade figures for February are released. Analysts expect sales to have risen by around 0.3 per cent for the month.
Markets:Wall Street closed up yesterday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.7 per cent to close at 24033 the S&P 500 added 1.3 per cent to close at 2614 and the NASDAQ rose 1 per cent to close at 6941.
European markets closed weaker: London’s FTSE dropped 0.4 per cent, Paris lost 0.3 per cent and Frankfurt fell 0.8 per cent.
Asian markets closed mixed: Tokyo’s Nikkei dropped 0.5 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.3 per cent, and China’s Shanghai Composite dropped 0.8 per cent.
Taking all of this into equation, the ASX futures are pointing to a 27 points gain. Yesterday the Australian share market closed lower with the S&P/ASX 200 Index closing 7 points lower at 5752.
Company news Alternative assets manager Blue Sky Alternative Investments
(ASX:BLA) has hit back at an opinion piece by foreign short seller Glaucus. In the opinion piece last week Glaucus claimed the asset manager's shares were 77 per cent over-valued. In a document released to the ASX last night Blue Sky lists a number of factual errors made by Glaucus and provides responses to questions put to it by the ASX compliance division.
Shares in Blue Sky
(ASX:BLA) last traded at $10.40 on the 28th of March 2018.
CurrenciesOne Australian Dollar at 7.30 was buying 76.84 US cents, 54.67 Pence Sterling, 81.95 Yen and 62.66 Euro cents.
Commodities Gold has dropped $10.40 to $US1337 an ounce.
Silver has lost 28 cents to $US16.39 an ounce.
Oil has gained 56 cents to $US63.57 a barrel.
CryptocurrenciesBitcoin has gained 6 per cent to US$7444, Ethereum up about 8 per cent to US$414, and ripple has gained about 10 per cent to 54 cents.
