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Wall Street ended Friday’s session on a positive note as investors responded to the Fed’s interest rate hike of 0.25% and signals that the Fed is near the end of its monetary tightening cycle. The positive sentiment boost from the Fed was a much-needed relief following a week of turbulence in the global banking sector. The Dow Jones rose 0.41%, the S&P500 added 0.56% and the tech heavy Nasdaq jumped 0.3%.

Over in Europe, it was a different story with markets in the region ending lower on Friday as investor fears of a global banking crisis worsened. Deutsche Bank fell 8.5% on Friday after its credit default swaps, a form of insurance for bond holders, pushed higher. Germany’s DAX fell 1.66%, the French CAC lost 1.74%, and in the UK, the FTSE100 fell 1.26%.

What to watch today:

• Ahead of the local trading session the SPI futures are anticipating the ASX to open 0.04% lower to start the new trading week.
• Locally, the ASX ended almost 0.2% lower on Friday, weighed down by a sharp sell-off in financials stocks, and for the week the key index lost 0.57%. Block Inc (ASX:SQ2) was the worst performing stock on the local bourse in the final trading session of the week on claims made by famed short-seller Hindenburg Research, that the company is committing widespread fraud.
• On the commodities front to start the week, oil is trading lower again, down 1% at US$69.26/barrel, gold is down 0.75% at US$1978.57/ounce and iron ore is up 0.41% at US$122.50/tonne.
• The Aussie dollar is buying US$0.67, 86.85 Japanese Yen, 54.89 British Pence and NZ$1.07.
• Stocks trading ex-dividend today include Australian Clinical Labs (ASX:ACL), and Lycopodium (ASX:LYL). If you’ve been thinking about these stocks, it might be worth considering buying in today as stocks trading ex-dividend generally trade lower on the ex-dividend date.
• There is no local economic data released today however investors will be eagerly awaiting the release of preliminary Australian retail sales data for February, which is out tomorrow, with consensus expecting a rise of 0.5% from a 1.9% jump in January.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter has increased its price target on Aeris Resources (ASX:AIS) from $0.92 to $0.95 and maintains a buy rating on the company following the copper production and exploration company discovering a new massive sulphide lens at the Bentley deposit at the company’s 100%-owned Jaguar Operations in WA.
• Trading Central has identified a bullish signal on Lifestyle Communities (ASX:LIC) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 35-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may rise from the close of $15.03 to the range of $20 to $21 according to standard principles of technical analysis.