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Despite a mixed session on Friday, Wall Street posted gains across the three key indices for last week with the Dow Jones recording its best week since December and the market is on track for a fifth consecutive month of gains. Investors took a slight breather on Friday after a strong week for equities following the Fed’s latest FOMC meeting where interest rates were held steady again. The Dow Jones fell 0.77% on Friday but added almost 2% for the week, the S&P500 fell 0.14% on Friday but gained 2.3% for the week, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 0.16% on Friday and nearly 2.9% for the week.

FedEx added more the 7% on Friday after posting adjusted earnings that beat analysts’ expectations, while Nike fell 6.9% on disappointing guidance and easing sales in China.

Over in Europe, markets closed mostly higher in the region, even after stocks soared to an all-time-high on Thursday. The STOXX600 rose 0.02% on Friday as tech and travel stock losses weighed on the market gains. Germany’s DAX rose 0.15% on Friday while the French CAC fell 0.34%, and, in the UK, the FTSE100 rose 0.61% at the week’s end. The Swiss National Bank surprised markets on Thursday by lowering its core policy rate by 0.25 percentage points to 1.5% which marks the first major economy to cut interest rates in a sign key global economies are winning the battle of inflation and further cuts could be expected in the near future. The Bank of England held rates as expected on Thursday, however, signalled rate cuts could be on the horizon soon.

Locally on Friday, the ASX200 lost 0.2% as a sell-off in commodity-related stocks, particularly energy stocks, weighed on the key index. For the week though, the ASX200 still managed to post a 1.3% gain. Declining prices of oil, iron ore and gold were the drivers of investors selling out of commodity-related stocks on Friday.

Fisher & Paykel Healthcare rallied 7.7% on Friday after the company upgraded its earnings guidance range to NZ$260m to NZ$265m mainly due to strength in demand for the company’s hospital product group and OSA masks.

What to watch today:

• Ahead of the local trading session to start the new trading week here in Australia, the SPI futures are anticipating the ASX to open Monday’s session 0.09% higher.
• On the commodities front this morning, oil is trading 0.54% lower at US$80.63/barrel, uranium is down 6.6% at US$85/pound, gold is down 0.72% at US$2165/ounce and iron ore is up 2.77% at US$111.50/tonne.
• AU$1.00 is buying 65 US$0.65, 98.60 Japanese Yen, 51.7 British Pence and NZ$1.09.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter has maintained a speculative buy rating on Deep Yellow (ASX:DYL) and have increased the 12-month price target on the uranium miner from $1.81 to $1.90/share following the company’s successful completion Tranche-1 or $140.5m of its $220m institutional placement with the remaining to be completed post a general meeting in April. Deep Yellow also plans to raise a further $30m via a retail share purchase plan, with total funds raised to be directed towards the advancement of the company’s Tumas uranium project in Namibia.
• And Trading Central has identified a bearish signal on Reece (ASX:REH) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 17-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may fall from the close of $27.65 to the range of $25.10 to $25.60 according to standard principles of technical analysis.