Wall Street closed out its best week since March on a down note on Friday which will see the ASX 200 start trading on Monday with a line ball loss.
The overnight ASX 200 share price index trading finished with a 3 point loss -- not much at all.
Even though there’s a public holiday in the US to limit activity, investors wanting to ride this current boom higher will no doubt chase futures and electronic trading in Asia next week.
There’s a whiff of the bull in the air around Wall Street and after the charge higher by seven big techs led by Tesla and Apple, last week saw gains by mid and small caps as well.
However, Friday saw Wall Street take a breather as the S&P 500 fell 0.4 per cent after wobbling up and down through the day. The Dow and the Nasdaq also dipped as the tech boom took a breather.
The index still marked its fifth-straight winning week, its longest such streak since November 2021. It’s also near its highest level since April 2022.
For the week, the S&P 500 was up 110.73 points, or 2.6 per cent, the Dow rose 422.34 points, or 1.2 per cent while the Nasdaq jumped 430.43 points, or 3.2 per cent.
Year to date the S&P 500 is up 570.09 points, or 14.8 per cent, the Dow is up 1,151.87 points, or 3.5 per cent and the Nasdaq has surged a huge 3,223.09 points, or 30.8 per cent.
By sector, technology had the largest percentage increase of the week, climbing 4.4 per cent, followed by a 3.3 per cent rise in materials and a 3.2 per cent increase in consumer discretionary, among other gainers. Only one sector was in the red: Energy shed 0.7 per cent.
Friday saw the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond climb to 3.77 per cent, up around 5 points on the day and just under 3 points for the week. The US dollar weakened which saw the Aussie end at 68.70 US cents for a gain of around 2 per cent for the week. The US dollar index lost 1.2 per cent over the week.
In Tokyo the Nikkei ended at another multi-decade high of 33,706 after touching 33,772 in trading on Friday.
That put the narrowly-based index up 4.4 per cent for the week and more than 29 per cent for the year to date.
The big driver last week was the gain for Toyota after it convinced investors it was finally serious about the transition to an EV future.
Toyota shares finished their best week since 2009 on Friday, as the automaker laid out a serious plan for future all-electric vehicles and company veteran Akio Toyoda became leader of the Japanese company’s board.
Shares of Toyota on the New York Stock Exchange closed Friday at US$164.35, down 2.3 per cent for the day but still up 10.6 per cent on the week. That five-day gain was the stock’s best week since April 2009 when shares increased 14.5 per cent.
Such a rally is not typical for the stock. It’s only the third double-digit weekly gain in more than two decades for the relatively well-performing but mundane stock, according to CNBC.
Toyota Shares are up 20 per cent so far in 2023. That’s not a Tesla-like performance but it shows that once you can convince investors you are serious about an electric future (if you stand to be a big loser if you don’t change) then there are big market gains to be had.
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The small loss at the opening today for the local market shouldn’t be a worry after Friday’s 76 point surge for the ASX 200 to 7251.2 at the close as all sectors except healthcare traded higher.
That gain pushed the index up more than 2 per cent for the week, or more than 150 points.
Energy companies (up 3.5 per cent) led the way as coal miners Whitehaven (up 8.3 per cent) and Yancoal (up 3.6 per cent) both rallied on growing signs the Chinese government is starting to get serious about stimulating the country’s flagging economy. That’s despite another bad weak for thermal coal prices which lost 5 per cent to 7 per cent.
A bump in oil prices saw shares in Woodside up 3.5 per cent and Santos jump 4.1 per cent.
Utilities (up 1.2 per cent) also rose as AGL shares soared 14.7 per cent per cent after it said it was looking to more than double 2024 earnings as a result of higher electricity prices and increased plant production (and less downtime because of mechanical problems, as we saw in 2022-23).
The more positive news from China also helped lithium stocks to rise. Players like Liontown were higher with an 8.3 per cent gain while Pilbara Minerals shares rose 4.9 per cent.
