The Overnight Report: Wall Street Wrestles With Its Mind

This story features MONADELPHOUS GROUP LIMITED. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: MND

By Greg Peel

The Dow closed up 14 points or 0.1% to 15,976 while the S&P lost 0.4% to 1791 and the Nasdaq dropped 0.9%.

Bridge Street ignored Friday’s positive lead from Wall Street yesterday in posting another soggy session, mimicking the weather in Sydney. The Australian market appears now to be stuck in limbo, unable to justify another push forward yet still prepared to pick up stocks on any drop, as we saw last week, particularly in the high-yielding banks.

Bridge Street also shunned supposedly positive news out of China on the weekend which suggested Beijing will look to further open up the country’s financial markets. Real data was released yesterday with regard to the Chinese property market, and it was of some concern. The good news is that China’s average housing price rose only 0.6% to October from September, having risen 0.7% from August and as much as 1% back in April. The bad news is October’s gain represented a record 9.6% rise year on year.

Despite efforts from the government to cool China’s property bubble, prices in Beijing rose 16.4% year on year, in Shanghai 17.8% and in Guangzhou and Shenzhen around 20%. These are the biggest gains since data began being collected at the beginning of 2011.

Sort of puts Sydney’s property “bubble” into perspective. The concern is that Beijing may need to tighten monetary policy in response, just as China’s GDP growth is looking a little healthier.

The news out of China on the weekend helped pushed to Aussie back over 94, which is not good news for the stock market, although the currency has since settled back to where it finished on Friday, at US$0.9374.

The housing news from the US is that the NAHB housing market sentiment index has remained steady at 54 this month after falling in the two previous months. It is the sixth straight reading above the 50-neutral mark, but the industry is worried what another round of political argy-bargy might evoke as budget and debt ceiling arguments resume in the new year.

Wall Street has rather detached itself from real economic data lately nonetheless, suggesting the stock market is the only place to be for QE infinity. On that note, billionaire investor Carl Icahn suggested last night that healthy third quarter US corporate earnings, recently reported, are merely a mirage fuelled by the low interest rate environment and that Wall Street may be shaping up for “a big drop”.

This comment was enough to see the indices shy away from psychological resistance. Last night the Dow traded briefly over 16,000 and the S&P 500 over 1800 before both turned tail. Such levels typically take some work to conquer, and can spark rounds of profit-taking in the short term. Tech stocks ultimately came under pressure, sending the Nasdaq scurrying and dragging down the S&P as a result.

The US dollar index is down 0.1% to 80.75 but gold took a turn for the worse again last night, falling US$15.80 to US$1272.00/oz. Gold has now lost its brief “Yellen premium”, and last night was not helped by one Fedhead suggesting QE3 should be brought to an end and another suggesting the US economy will be strong enough over the next two years to do just that.

Base metals also traded lower across the board last night, but again on small moves. Only nickel managed to breach a 1% fall. West Texas crude came under pressure again, on Fedspeak and news Saudi Arabian exports reached an eight-year high in September. WTI fell US97c to US$92.97/bbl while Brent ticked up just a tad to US$108.55/bbl.

Spot iron ore rose US20c to US$137.00/t.

If the futures are anything to go by, and in recent times they haven’t been, Bridge Street is in for another soggy session today. The SPI Overnight fell 19 points or 0.4%.

China will post foreign investment data today while the RBA will release the minutes of its November policy meeting.

There are a handful of mid-cap AGMs today to keep the punters interested, including iiNet ((IIN)) and Monadelphous ((MND)).
 

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