morning all
For those who don"t know Highlandlad has retired from opening pre market after a stellar 7 year career
The ASX looks set to open flat with the Dec SPI contract easing 1 point to 5206
This despite the Chinese Shanghai Composite losing 5.5% on friday in it's biggest 1 day loss since the August rout.
European then US markets largely shrugged off this potential downer ending slightly weaker with the S&P 500 finishing just 1 point higher in a shortened Thanksgiving trading session.
On Friday Australian shares suffered a weekly loss led by a slide in market heavyweight BHP that, together with the ongoing malaise in commodities, weighed very heavily on the materials sector. The week also witnessed massive destruction of shareholder value at law firm Slater and Gordon, with three-quarters of its market capitalisation being wiped out following legislative changes in the UK.
Initially, the market was headed for a small weekly gain following strong leads from overseas, but sentiment faded over the course of the session. The ASX200 finished 0.1 per cent lower on Friday and 1 per cent lower for the week at 5202.6, while the All Ordinaries slipped 0.1 per cent for the day and 1 per cent for the week to 5251.4.
BHP Billiton dropped 0.9 per cent on Friday and 8.4 per cent for the week amid growing concerns about the company's ability to maintain its progressive dividend policy and the continuing fallout from the Samarco dam disaster in Brazil. The lawsuit by Brazil was reported after the close of trading in New York on Friday.
The Standard & Poor's 500 Index closed little changed for a fourth straight day amid declines in energy and Walt Disney shares, while a gauge of small-cap stocks posted its longest winning streak in eight months. In a shortened trading session following the Thanksgiving holiday, Disney was a drag after saying ESPN subscriptions declined 3 per cent in its last fiscal year.
Seven out of 10 major S&P sectors rose slightly. Trading volume was modest, with 2.79 billion shares changing hands on US exchanges, compared with the 7 billion average for the previous seven sessions. Most traders extended their weekend after taking Wall Street was closed on Thursday.
"We're going to get today over with and hit the ground running next week," said Brian Battle, director of trading at Performance Trust Capital Partners in Chicago. Battle expects a busy start to this week as investors prepare for a Dec. 4 non-farm payrolls report that may bring volatility ahead of a widely expected decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at its mid-December meeting.
The greenback climbed as much as 0.3 per cent against a basket of 10 currencies on Friday to near the highest since at
least 2004. Odds that the Federal Reserve will increase rates next month for the first time since 2006 advanced to 72 per cent on Friday, from 35 percent a month ago, Fed-fund futures data show. Bets on higher rates have risen as a resilient US labour market powers consumer spending, adding to signs that the economy may be robust enough to withstand higher rates. "We haven't seen the dollar at these levels for a very, very long time," Bart Melek, the head of commodity strategy at TD Securities in Toronto, said in a telephone interview. "The market is expecting the Federal Reserve to be fully on the bandwagon."
Nickel fell for the first time in four days after smelters in China vowed to curtail output from next month, underscoring scepticism among investors on whether cutbacks by the world's biggest producer are able to make a dent in the global glut. Nickel slid 5.5 per cent to an intraday low of $US8685 a tonne. It pared losses to close 4.5 per cent weaker at $US8775.
Over the last few days, most base metals have snapped back from multi-year lows, as bearish investors cancel positions on knee-jerk reactions to reports of production cuts and possible limitations on short-selling in China.
Investors also failed to get excited on Friday about news that China's state stockpiler is considering buying more than 1 million tonnes of aluminium from local smelters, according to industry sources.
"Ali prices are also down, as the move is not seen as addressing China's chronic oversupply problem," analyst Edward Meir at broker INTL FCStone in New York said in a note.
LME aluminium slumped 2.9 per cent to end at $US1458 a tonne, still above Monday's 6-1/2 year low of $US1432.50. The metal gained nearly 1 per cent for the week.
Copper smelters including Jiangxi Copper and Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group, the biggest in the country, plan to gather on Saturday in Shanghai to discuss their response to prices at six-year lows, according to people with knowledge of the event.LME copper finished down 1.4 per cent to $US4573 a tonne, holding above its low of $US4443.50 struck on Monday, its weakest since May 2009.
Tin bucked the weaker trend, climbing 0.7 per cent to close at $US15,000 a tonne, but zinc slid 3.5 per cent to finish at $US1548 and lead lost 1.5 per cent to $US1616.50.
Gold $1456
Iron Ore $46.07
Have a good day
sources SMH, TFR, *****, Reuters
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