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Wall St fell for the third straight day amid concerns of higher rates which saw the major indexes all in the red on Thursday. The S&P 500 had its worst session since March which saw it drop by 1.64%. The Dow Jones and Nasdaq continued this trend lowering 1.08% and 1.82% respectively.

The US 10-year treasury yield hit its highest level since 2007 as a result of jobless claims data displaying a still strong labour market which may encourage the Federal Reserve to hike rates.

In terms of US stocks this week, tech has seen the biggest losses with Tesla, Alphabet and Nvidia all losing more than 2%.

Over in Europe, markets closed lower following interest rate decisions from the Central Banks in England, Turkey, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway. The STOXX 600 ended Thursday lower by 1.3% with travel and leisure stocks seeing the biggest drop, losing 3.2%. Germany’s DAX and the French CAC both lost well over 1% whilst the FTSE 100 also lost 0.69% by market close.

Locally yesterday, the ASX 200 closed 1.37% lower with all sectors ending down on Thursday. The losses were lead by the energy and financial sectors which both closed 1.96% and 1.76% lower respectively.

What to watch today:

• The Australian share market is set to open lower, with the SPI futures suggesting a fall of 1.36% at the open this morning.
• In terms of commodities,
  • Oil is steady at 89 US dollars and 54 cents a barrel, after increasing off the back of Russia announcing a ban on fuel exports, raising further concerns about tight supplies.
  • Gold is down half a percent to 1930 US dollars an ounce after the US Federal Reserve delivered a hawkish pause on the cash rate.
  • And iron ore is up by 0.81% to 124 US dollars a tonne with JP Morgan raising target prices for the iron ore sector as China’s infrastructure expansion limited drawbacks from lower property development.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter maintains a speculative buy rating on Genetic Signatures (ASX:GSS), despite lowering its price target from $0.95 to $0.90 with a current share price of 51 cents a share. Bell Potter has maintained  a speculative buy rating as the company is about to complete a respiratory kit clinical trial as well as launching commercially in the US.
• And Bell Potter also maintains a speculative buy rating on Mesoblast (ASX:MSB) and its price target remains at $0.58 with a current share price of $0.37. Bell Potter upgraded to a speculative buy based on share price movement in FY24.