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The Australia share market is poised to rebound today after U.S. stocks traded higher overnight, with tech stocks leading the way.
Yesterday the S&P ASX 200 shed 0.7 per cent to close at 7,390.1 points.
The SPI futures index is up more than 50 points this morning, with the market expected to open around 7,348 points.
Wall Street
The Nasdaq extended its weak rally from late Monday to show a gain of 210 points, closing up 1.41 percent at 15,153 points.
The S&P 500 was 42 points higher (0.92 percent) to close at 4,713 points, while the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 182 points (0.51 per cent) to 36,251 points.
The large tech stocks helped the broader market, with Amazon rising more than 2% and shares in both Apple and Nvidia gaining around 1.5 per cent.
Genomic sequencing company Illumina rose 14% after issuing its 2022 revenue outlook, which beat consensus forecasts.
Interest rates cooled on Tuesday, with the 10-year Treasury yield slipping to 1.76%.
Investors seemed to take testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in their stride as they looked for indications to the likely staging of future rate increases and other plans by the Fed for tightening monetary policy in 2022.
Powell’s testimony to the Senate Banking Committee overnight our time painted a picture of a soft landing for the U.S. economy as the Fed looks to remove emergency stimulus measures and begin raising interest rates.
There remains increasing expectation that the central bank will move more aggressively than previously anticipated after inflation proved hotter and much more persistent than policy makers had predicted.
Exxon Mobil shares rose more than 3 per cent during the session after U.S. oil prices topped $80 per barrel.
In London, the FTSE 100 ended almost 0.6 percent or 42 points higher on Tuesday, while markets in both Frankfurt and Paris also gained. The DAX gained 1.1 percent while the Cac 40 improved 0.95 per cent despite a dire COVID-19 warning from a top Word Health Organisation official.
Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, suggested more than 50% of the continents’s population will be infected with the highly contagious Omicron variant over the next two months.
Kluge cited data from the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at a news briefing on Tuesday, saying a new “West to East tidal wave” of Omicron infections was sweeping across the region, on top of the previous Delta variant which is still prevalent.
Australian outlook
The SPI futures index is showing a gain of 55 points (0.78 per cent) with the market expected to open around 7,352 points.
Commodities
The gold price is up to US$1,818.40 an ounce having gained 1.1 per cent overnight.
Iron ore was down 1.37 per cent at US$124.48 a tonne while Brent crude was 3.6 per cent higher at US$83.82 a barrel.
Currency
The Australian dollar is slightly higher against the greenback, buying US$0.7209 (up 0.45 per cent), €0.6342 (up 0.09 per cent), £0.5290 (up 0.05 per cent) and NZ$1.063 (up 0.01 per cent).
Happy Wednesday.
