The Australian share market was sent on a rollercoaster ride as investors tried to make sense of the Federal Reserve’s decision to leave United States interest rates at zero. It may start with 0.25 of a percentage point in 2015, followed by one percentage point in 2016 and then a further 1.25 percentage point increase in 2017, the BBC reported. Yesterday’s rally took the currency’s weekly advance to 1.3%, the most since January.
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The Australian bond market is firmer following a keenly awaited decision by the Federal Reserve to keep its interest rate unchanged.
“With the Fed still projected to hike later this year, we expect the dollar to perform relative to currencies such as the euro, yen and sterling in coming months“, said Allan von Mehren, chief analyst at Danske Bank in Copenhagen.
“Yellen (made clear) that as things stand, there’s a very strong chance that they will hike interest rates later this year and therefore you have to question how far dollar weakness can extend”, she said. “Instead, what we got was more focus on macroeconomic uncertainties, and that was a little bit of surprise”, Eisner said.
While the market mostly ignored Malcolm Turnbull’s ousting of Tony Abbott, focusing on the Fed instead, the week was also busy with merger and aquisition activity.
The most notable news on the local market was a .3 billion takeover approach for credit analysis firm Veda.
“A few sectors looked to have bottomed, including the energy sector”, he said.
Among the energy stocks, Santos added 10 cents to $5.00, Oil Search was up 14 cents at $7.57 and Woodside Petroleum rose four cents to $29.95.
Stocks moved in and out of positive territory in the minutes after the announcement.
The banks all ended the week higher, although mixed. The broader NSE CNX Nifty Index gained 1.05% to 7,981.90 points.
Rio Tinto and Fortescue lost about 1.4 per cent, and BHP Billiton was down about half that.
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The supermarket retailers were less successful. WASHINGTON – For the second straight week, average long-term United States mortgage rates inched up this week as financial markets awaited the Federal Reserve’s crucial decision on interest rates. But the Aussie was unable to sustain the gains on worries about the health of both the USA and global economies, traders said.
