Overnight Wall Street closed with a 2.1 per cent gain, qualifying it as one of the quietest sessions in October. As the recent Australian share market has never made consecutive gains more than two days, analysts speculate a flat market today. Investors may take the breather as they did and wait until the expected RBA rate cut next Tuesday to move back into the market.
The Australian sharemarket has closed at a fresh four-year low after falling more than 1% on renewed global recession fears. Investors actually had expected a much more volatile as the significant declines on Wall Street last Friday gave a negative lead to the local market. Analysts said it was not as bad as expected and the miners performed well yesterday.
Yesterday Australian shares rallied to their biggest one-day gain since October 1997. Confidence in Australian banks was buoyed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's announcement that all deposits in Australian financial institutions would be guaranteed for three years. Analysts said last week the market probably hit the bottom when investors were in the depths of fear and panic, but recovery may cost a long time. Despite the short-term buoyancy, the Australian market remains fearful of deeper plunges, especially if the powerful US market continues to falter.
The Australian share market ended a horror week on Friday, down more than 8% in a session that wiped A$106 billion from the value of stocks on the bourse. Last Friday the S&P/ASX200 index fell 8.3% in mid-afternoon trading, losing 360.2 points to plunge to 3960.7, the biggest one-day loss for the ASX200 index. Its affiliate, the All Ordinaries index, had its worst day since the October 1987 crash, losing 8.2%, or 351.9 points, to 3939.4. The ASX200 lost almost 16% for the week, about three times the amount it lost in the week after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Yesterday the Australian sharemarket closed lower for the third consecutive day on concerns that Wall Street's latest banking woes would hit Australia. The four major banks deducted the most from the index with their major losses of more than 3% following Lehman Brothers' announcement overnight in New York of asset sales.
Yesterday, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 fell 91.2 points, or 1.85 per cent, to 4,814.3, while the broader All Ordinaries shed 89.9 points, or 1.81 per cent, to 4,871.5.
The company's evolution is bringing results, returning shareholder value to near three-year highs. With its shares trading over 300% over the year's low, NetComm has achieved a remarkable turn around in a broader market that is down approx 26% of last year's high.
The Australian share market fell over three per cent on Friday after troubling news from National Australia Bank (NAB) related to losses from investments in risky US mortgages, and a weak lead from Wall Street. But gains on US markets on Friday night are expected to encourage investors to pick up stocks that were oversold during Friday's 3 per cent fall.
