daytraders after market wekend lounge 25/11 , page-14

Sydney - Saturday - November 26: (RWE Aust Business News) Wall has again been eroded by fresh developments on the European fight to stabilise financial markets.

The only progress has been more rhetoric about what to do as Italy's borrowing costs soar while France and Germany say they will not allow Italy to default.

But more easily said than done - with the ECB powerless to step into the breach instead of about 17 countries that can't make up their minds together.

The current situation of soaring borrowing costs is a serious worry to financial markets around the globe including Australia which has to borrow at least $300 million in the year ahead.

In the upshot US equities fell, with the Dow ending mixed on 15 falls ,12 rises and 3 unchanged on the session.

Overnight the Dow was ahead 87 early only to lose most of it by the close with a final loss of 25.77 points or 0.23%.

It capped the worst Thanksgiving-week drop since 1932 in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, as S&P cut Belgium's rating and a report said Greece is demanding private investors accept larger losses on their debt.

The Financial stocks in the S&P 500 rose 0.4 per cent as a group, trimming an earlier gain of 2 percent.

Chevron Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. slid at least 1.5 per cent to pace losses in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Sears Holdings Corp. lost 1.3 per cent while Wal-Mart Stores Inc. rose 0.4 per cent on Black Friday, traditionally the biggest U.S. shopping day of the year.

The S&P 500 declined 0.3 per cent to 1,158.67 at 1 p.m. New York time, falling for a seventh straight day, the longest streak since August.

Wall St was closed yesterday for a holiday and trading ended at 1 p.m. today.

About 3 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, the lowest volume since November. 26, the day after Thanksgiving last year.

"The demands of Greece now totally change the game," Mark Grant, a managing director at Southwest Securities Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said in an e-mail.

"The situation can no longer be called voluntary by any stretch of the imagination.

The equity markets in the United States may test the lows again as there is increasing concern of a major recession in Europe."

The S&P 500 fell 4.7 per cent since Nov. 18, capping a second week of losses as the burden of government debt grew around the world.

The cost of insuring European sovereign bonds against default rose to a record. The benchmark gauge was headed toward its worst November since 2000, dropping 7.8 per cent for the month so far.



Wall Street's Dow settled 25.77 points or 0.23% lower at 11,231.78 while the S&P 500 lost 3.12 or 0.27% to 1158.67. In technologies, the Nasdaq Composite shed 18.57 or 0.75% to 2441.51 and the 100 index fell 15.66 points or 0.72% to 2150.88 after markets closed 1 pm on Friday after a shortened session. Bonds market showed the 10 year note down 23/32 to 100 11/32, lifting the yield 0.08 pc, while the 30 year bond yield gained 0.08 points to 2.92pc and the 2year note yield up 0.01 to 027pc.



Banks had the biggest gain in the S&P 500 among 24 industries, rising 1 percent.

Wells Fargo & Co. jumped 1.3 per cent to $23.51. BB&T Corp. rose 0.6 per cent to $21.17.

Jefferies Group Inc. gained 1.3 per cent to $10.65.

The investment bank has hired at least seven UBS AG bankers in Hong Kong in the past two months after luring Ren Wang from the Swiss lender to become its Asia president, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

Some of the biggest American companies fell today. Chevron retreated 1.6 per cent to $92.29. Hewlett-Packard declined 1.5 per cent to $25.39.

A measure of retailers in the S&P 500 fell 0.8 percent, the second-biggest decline among 24 industries.

Sears Holdings slid 1.3 per cent to $58.40. Wal-Mart rose 0.4 per cent to $56.89.

Amazon.com Inc., the biggest Internet retailer, slumped 3.5 per cent to $182.40.

A record share of households said this is a bad time to spend, according to the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index. The measure has reached minus 50 or less in nine of the past 10 weeks, an unprecedented performance in its 26-year history

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