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Global Market Wrap-Up - March 1, 2012

March 1, 2012 - 8:02pm — mhanna
Thursday, March 1, 2012
By: 
Mark Hanna
U.S. stocks rallied rebounded Thursday from the previous day's selloff, as investors took a mixed bag of economic news in stride.  Manufacturing growth slowed and construction spending dipped, while auto and retail sales both climbed.   The S&P 500 gained 0.6% and NASDAQ 0.7%.
  • Weekly applications for unemployment benefits dipped last week to a seasonally adjusted 351,000, the Labor Department said. The four-week average of applications fell to 354,000. Both are the lowest levels in four years.
  • Consumer spending increased 0.2 percent in January, the Commerce Department said. That's better than December's reading of no change. And income rose 0.3 percent, the second straight monthly increase.  Still, after paying taxes and adjusting for inflation, incomes actually dipped in January.
  • Inflation-adjusted spending was flat for the third straight month. That was partly because of warmer weather, which allowed people to spend less to heat their homes.
  • The ISM Manufacturing index fell to 52.4, the lowest reading since November. Any reading above 50 indicates growth.  New orders and employment fell, while prices jumped sharply mostly due to higher energy prices, versus the prior month.
Oil climbed $1.77 to $108.84 a barrel.   Gold settled at $1,722.20 an ounce, up $10.90, or 0.6%, while silver climbed nearly 3%, or $1.019, to $35.661.

The British FTSE 100 index was up 1%, while Germany's DAX rose 1.3%. The CAC-40 in France was 1.4% higher.
  • Mass unemployment in Greece and Spain have combined to push the jobless rate across the 17-country euro zone up to its highest rate since the euro was established in 1999, at 10.7 percent.
  • Inflation in the Euro zone unexpectedly also rose in February to 2.7 percent from the previous month’s 2.6 percent.
  Japan's Nikkei 225 index dropped 0.2%, while the Shanghai Composite Index closed down 0.1%.
  • In China, the official government purchasing managers’ index rose for a third month to 51.0 from 50.5 in January, the statistics bureau and logistics federation said.  A separate manufacturing index released today by HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics rose to 49.6 in February from 48.8 the prior month, the third straight improvement and the highest since October.


Mark Hanna, known in the financial community as "TraderMark," provides his insightful daily market coverage in this column, exclusive to Euro Pacific Capital.

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