The markets are seeing out the month of May on a fairly subdued note today. Any optimism that may have been around was quickly wiped out earlier after GDP for the last quarter came in at -5.7% (0.2% worse than analysts were expecting). Furthermore the Chicago PMI figure, which came in at 34.9, also disappointed the markets because a figure of 42.1 was expected.

As a result of all this the US markets have fallen from their highs and are now trading close to their opening levels. The Dow Jones is just 3 points higher at 8407 whilst the S&P 500 is 2 points higher at 909 and the Nasdaq is 1 point higher at 1753 with around 45 minutes to go.

This is in contrast to the European markets which had earlier traded a lot higher after a couple of pieces of positive economic news such as house prices going up in the UK and German retail sales coming in much stronger than the previous month.

They did still end the day in positive territory but the gains were more modest. The FTSE 100 finished 0.69% higher at 4417.94 whilst the CAC 40 finished 0.43% higher at 3277.65 and the DAX finished 0.16% higher at 4940.82.

On the currency markets the US dollar has had a particularly weak day today, as you might expect from the poor US data and the positive European data. Both the GBP/USD and EUR/USD pairs have posted substantial gains (currently trading at 1.6143 and 1.4138 respectively) whilst the USD/JPY has fallen 160 points to 95.20.

The commodity markets have also been lively because we have seen the price of gold shoot up $17 today to $980, edging closer and closer to that psychological $1000 level, whilst the price of oil has also resumed it’s upward trend, trading $1.23 higher at $66.34.

 

 

Filed under: Market News

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!