Well unsurprisingly the Swine flu is continuing to weigh heavily on the markets as most of the major indices have fallen today. The US markets, however, have bucked the trend and have actually ventured into positive territory in recent hours.

This is largely due to a couple of positive news items regarding the US economy. Firstly there was the news that consumer confidence had risen to a 5-month high coming in at 39.2 (versus an expected figure of 29.6) and secondly there was the news that house prices (in the 20 cities used in the report) were 18.6% lower than the same month last year, which although doesn’t sound that great, is an improvement on the equivalent figure last month which came in at -19%.

These positive economic releases have boosted the US markets because they are all trading much higher than they were earlier. The Dow Jones is up 24 points at 8049 whilst the Nasdaq and S&P 500 are little changed at 1678 and 858 respectively.

The European indices haven’t fared so well, however. The FTSE 100 ended the day 70.61 points lower at 4096.40 whilst the DAX closed 86.65 points lower at 4607.42 and the CAC 40 closed 51.41 points lower at 3051.02.

Elsewhere the price of oil is once again back below $50 at $49.52 whilst the price of gold has fallen below the $900 level and currently trades at $891.70.

On the forex markets, the GBP/USD and EUR/USD both fell sharply early on but have since recovered these losses, currently trading at 1.4163 and 1.3128 respectively. The EUR/GBP is also trading higher and is attempting to push through 0.90 once more trading at 0.8986 whilst the USD/JPY continues to look weak and despite recovering some of it’s earlier losses, currently trades at 96.50.

 

 

Filed under: Market News

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