Precious Metals

A fall of 45 points in the Dow suggests Tuesday’s rally is holding up okay. Bernanke joins the recession chorus.

It was an explosive opening to the second quarter on Wall Street, aided by better economic data and a successful Lehman capital raising. The Dow rose close to 400 points.

Barclays Capital’s latest analysis of seasonal trends shows equity prices traditionally do well in April, the Aussie market especially, while the Kiwi dollar also generally strengthens.

The worst quarter on Wall Street in six years came to a lacklustre end last night, the Dow rising 46 points as commodity prices fell.

The Dow fell an uninspired 86 points on Friday as the first quarter winds down.

Tech stocks and financials took Wall Street down again last night, as the Dow lost 120 points.

The Dow fell over 100 points on weak data, a weaker dollar, a resurgent oil price, and renewed concerns surrounding Citigroup.

Weekly musings from your editor. Surely if commodities are about to correct, this implies the current market recovery is non-sustainable?

Wall Street shrugged off weak consumer confidence numbers to post only a small fall in the Dow last night.

Brokers are broadly positive on the proposed merger of Lihir and Equigold, particularly from the Lihir side given the geographical diversification the deal would provide.