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Wall Street recovered to rally mode on Friday as investors welcomed better-than-expected jobs data indicating the world’s largest economy remains robust as inflation falls and interest rates remain elevated. The rally on Friday was not enough to overcome a losing week across the key indices for Wall St though with the Dow Jones rising 0.8% on Friday but sliding 2.27% for the week, the S&P500 gained 1.11% on Friday but fell 0.95% over the week and the tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped 1.24% on Friday but ended the week down 0.8%. The US Labour Departments’ jobs report out of Friday showed jobs growth of 303,000 in March which beat economists’ expectations of 200,000. Wages also rose 0.3% for the month and 4.1% from a year ago which were in-line with estimates.

Over in Europe, markets closed lower on the holiday-shortened trading week as investors digested key economic data. The STOXX600 fell 0.84%, Germany’s DAX lost 1.24%, the French CAC fell 1.11% and, in the UK, the FTSE100 ended Friday’s session down 0.84%. House prices fell 1% month-on-month in March which were below economists’ expectations of a 0.1% rise in a sign the housing market is crippling under the high interest rate pressure.

Across the Asia markets on Friday, markets closed mixed as South Korea’s Kospi index soared 1.29%, while Japan’s Nikkei ended the day flat, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng ended the day down 0.18%.

Locally on Friday, the ASX200 posted its third loss over the shortened-trading week, ending the session down 0.6% as local investors were spooked by comments out of the Fed indicating rate cuts may not happen this year if inflation remains sticky.

What to watch today:

• Ahead of the first trading session of the new week locally, the SPI futures are expecting the ASX to open Monday’s session up 0.5% tracking Wall Street’s rally on Friday.
• AU$1.00 is buying US$0.66, 99.62 Japanese Yen, 52.07 British Pence and NZ$1.09.
• On the economic calendar today, Australia’s home loans data for February is out just before midday with the expectation of a 2.25% rise in home loans MoM following a 4.6% drop in January which will indicate a rebound in Aussies’ appetite for home loans as rate cuts are on the horizon.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter maintains a speculative buy rating on Mesoblast (ASX:MSB) and have significantly increased the 12-month price target on the biotech company from 58cps to $1.40cps following the FDA informing MSB that the available clinical data from its Phase 3 study in children with steroid refractory acute graft versus host disease appears sufficient to support resubmission of the Biological Licence Application (BLA) for Remestemcel. Bell Potter’s analyst sees the best estimate for approval of Remestemcel is mid-August this year.
• And Trading Central has identified a bullish signal on NRW Holdings (ASX:NWH) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 15-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may rise from the close of $2.87 to the range of $3.10 to $3.16 according to standard principles of technical analysis.