| Global Market Wrap-Up - February 9, 2012 |
February 9, 2012 - 7:33pm — mhanna
For the fourth day in a row U.S. stocks shook off early selling to finish neutral to positive. A positive weekly jobs report, finalization of another round of bailouts for Greece, and more quantitative easing from Britain helped support stocks. Apple closed in on $500 per share and set an all-time high after reports that it will unveil the iPad 3 at an event in March. The S&P 500 gained 0.2% and NASDAQ 0.4%.
British shares gained 0.3%, German shares 0.6%, and French shares 0.4%.
Mark Hanna, known in the financial community as "TraderMark," provides his insightful daily market coverage in this column, exclusive to Euro Pacific Capital.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Please feel free to repost with proper attribution and all links included.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
By:
Mark Hanna - Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 358,000, the Labor Department said. Economists had forecast claims rising to 370,000. The four-week moving average for new claims fell 11,000 to 366,250 - the lowest level since April 2008.
British shares gained 0.3%, German shares 0.6%, and French shares 0.4%.
- Greece announced an agreement to cut costs and keep from defaulting on its debt next month. The deal calls for Greece to make steep cuts in government jobs and spending. Greece's troika of lenders — the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — insisted on the cuts. The cuts are one condition of a €130 billion bailout for Greece, without which it can't afford €14.5 billion worth of bond payments due March 20.
- The European Central Bank kept its key interest rate at a record low of 1% on Thursday as it waits to see if the 17-nation eurozone needs more help to stave off recession.
- The Bank of England also left rates unchanged but announced it would buy 50 billion pounds ($79 billion) more in bonds to stimulate the lagging British economy.
- Auto sales in China fell 24 percent in January from a year earlier. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said that 1.16 million passenger cars were sold in January, down from a monthly record 1.5 million a year earlier.
Mark Hanna, known in the financial community as "TraderMark," provides his insightful daily market coverage in this column, exclusive to Euro Pacific Capital.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Please feel free to repost with proper attribution and all links included.
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