Daily Market Reports | Jun 30 2011
By Greg Peel
The Dow closed up 72 points or 0.6% while the S&P gained 0.8% to 1307 and the Nasdaq added 0.4%.
The 1300 level in the S&P 500 did not provide much resistance as Wall Street rallied for the third session in a row, fuelled by the Greek parliament's 155-138 vote to pass the austerity bill in principle amidst violent riots in Athens. Tonight each element of the package must be individually voted on but last night's win suggests it should be academic from here.
Not unsurprisingly, the vote announcement was first met with some selling from the “sell the fact” brigade. Wall Street had already put in its best two-day move since February on anticipation of a positive result. But the buyers quickly won out once more in a session peppered with various snippets of positive global news.
Yesterday's Asian session saw the release of the Japanese industrial production number for May which showed a 5.7% gain. A positive number was always expected but this represents the biggest monthly jump in 50 years, led by Japanese automakers coming back on line with a vengeance after the tsunami. The result provides concrete support to those who have long been touting the global economic impact of a recovering Japan, and while the magnitude of the May number is unlikely to be repeated, markets can feel confident that the Japanese recovery has begun. The release helped the ASX 200 to a solid gain yesterday.
Economists had expected May US pending home sales to show a 3% gain so an 8.2% jump was met with much enthusiasm, coming off the back of yesterday's surprisingly robust rise in the Case-Shiller house price index. Is the US housing double-dip now over? Well these are spring season numbers so it's a bit too early to get carried away. Wall Street was happy to take it nonetheless.
Last night Bank of America agreed to pay an US$8.5bn settlement to customers screwed over in the mortgage crisis, marking the biggest such settlement in history. It's a decent slug for BofA but represents positive news given Wall Street had anticipated the worst and now the uncertainty is removed. BofA shares are down 23% in 12 months but last night jumped 3% in a generally positive session for the financials.
Late in the session the Fed announced that debit card swipe fees would be capped at US21c, which represents a compromise between the current US44c the banks have enjoyed and the US12c originally touted and backed by retailers. Shares in both Visa and Mastercard quickly went into limit-up trading halts before Visa closed up 15% and Mastercard 11%.
Energy stocks were on a flyer again last night as Brent crude shot up US$3.52 to US$112.50/bbl on the positive Greek vote. Critics of last week's IEA release from the global Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a time when oil was already weaker have been vindicated given oil is now back above the price it fell from on the announcement. Rightly or wrong, the 60m barrel release is not substantial. West Texas rose US$2.18 to US$95.07/bbl.
The dam finally broke to the upside last night on the LME after several sessions of uncertain limbo. Copper led the charge by breaching its recent range and jumping 2.5%. Aluminium gained 0.5% and the others all put in 1-2% rallies.
Commodity prices were assisted by the inevitable rally in the euro – now above US$1.44 – which in turn led to a 0.5% drop in the US dollar index. And the world's favourite commodity currency has had a rocket attached these past two sessions, with last night showing a 1.3% gain to US$1.0681.
Gold met one of those push me-pull you situations, with dollar weakness and recent weakness in the metal itself overcoming the supposed reduction in sovereign risk stemming from the Greek vote. It finished up US$10.50 to US$1511.80/oz while silver surged 3%.
Over in the US bond market, the approaching expiry of QE2 and relief from Greece meant another big sell-off. The US Treasury again struggled to get its auction away, this time US$29bn of seven-year notes, and foreign central banks bought only 32% compared to a running average of 56%. The benchmark ten-year yield jumped another 9bps to 3.12% to mark a rise of nearly 30bps in three auction sessions.
The SPI Overnight gained 31 points or 0.7%.
So what now for Greece? Well apart from still having to vote on the individual components of the austerity bill tonight, in theory Greece will get the E12bn tranche of the 2011 bail-out fund of E110bn which will carry it through to August. While that implies we have to go through this all again one presumes the next tranche will be more of a formality once the new austerity package is in implementation mode. In the meantime, the usual suspects still have to agree on the new 2012 bail-out fund and knowing the Europeans there will no doubt yet be much dithering and deliberating, grandstanding and politicking before we get to that point. Given Germany has backed down on haircuts, French banks have offered to take haircuts of a sort, and the ECB seems determined to raise its cash rate in July, a resolution seems likely.
If this truly is a Groundhog year, Greece will now go out of the spotlight and contagion fears will wane until we'll all meet again around February 2012 and say “Omigod, Greece is about to default!” for the third time.
And if it's a Groundhog year we should see a second half rally, except that last year's rally had QE2 behind it. The S&P 500 closed at 1030 on June 30, 2010, so it's up 27% while the ASX 200 closed at 4301 so, pending today's trade, it's up a whopping 5%. Gotta love that Aussie.
And let's not forget that the last three sessions on Wall Street have been all about end of quarter window dressing with confidence provided by Greece, albeit ASIC is now vigilant about such activity in Australia which should keep fund managers here a bit more real.
Rudi will not be making his regular appearance on Sky Business today but fear not, for I will be joining the Business View panel tomorrow at 2pm.
[Note: All paying members at FNArena are being reminded they can set an email alert specifically for The Overnight Report. Go to Portfolio and Alerts in the Cockpit and tick the box in front of The Overnight Report. You will receive an email alert every time a new Overnight Report has been published on the website.]
