Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Stock markets have certainly been running freely since the US government returned to work last week. Yesterday the jobs report for September, showing 148,000 new jobs created, was somewhat below expectations of 180,000 jobs. This spurred markets further as bond yields fell to three month lows in the hope that tapering would be delayed even longer. The 10-year US government bond yield dropped to 2.53% (high was 3% recently). The US stock market closed up 0.6% at a new high on good earnings reports, while European markets rose for the 9th consecutive trading day, up 0.5% on average. Markets in Asia are down a bit, with the Japanese Nikkei off 1.5% and Aussie down 0.3%. The weaker US jobs report has knocked the US dollar to a low for the year of $1.377 to the euro…and 9.73 to the rand. The JSE rose by a sturdy 1% yesterday to close above 45,000 for the first time ever at 45,357, led by an almost 4% jump in Billiton’s share price on the back of superb production numbers. This was the 4th straight session of record highs. SA bond yields fell sharply, following the US yields (as do most countries), with the 13-year R186 SA government bond yield declining to 7.7%, pushing bond prices higher. Today our inflation number for September is due at 10am (6% expected) and the Finance Minister’s half-term budget speech is at noon. It is expected that the government deficit projected for the year will be a bit higher.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 06:13:49 +0000