The Australian market closed Friday’s session sharply lower, down 1.87% with all 11-sectors of the index closing in negative territory, following the Fed’s latest interest rate hike in the US causing investors to flee stocks in favour of cash in markets around the world. The riskier sectors such as consumer discretionary and tech stocks took the biggest hit on Friday, with those two sectors closing the session down 4.44%.

The winning stocks on Friday were New Hope Corporation (ASX:NHC), Whitehaven Coal (ASX:WHC) also extended its green-run of late and Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) closed Friday almost 2% higher. On the losing side, Block (ASX:SQ2) formerly known as Square fell almost 9% on Friday amid the tech and growth stock sell-off, while Xero (ASX:XRO) and Arena REIT (ASX:ARF) also each lost 7.8% and 6.8% respectively.

The most traded stocks by Bell Direct clients on Friday were Macquarie Group (ASX:MQG), Terracom (ASX:TER) and the Vanguard Australian Shares Index ETF (ASX:VAS).

Overseas, the US markets were sharply sold off on Friday as investors continue responding to the Fed’s latest 0.75% interest rate hike. The Dow Jones closed at a new 52-week low, down 1.62%, the Nasdaq lost 1.8% and the S&P500 fell 1.72%. Bond yields jumped last week around the world as a result of rising interest rates, which signals a warning of market distress as higher bond yields create more capacity for funds that may otherwise go into the stock market. The Bank of England also raised the UK’s interest rate by 0.5% to 2.25% to tackle the UK’s worst bout of inflation in 40-years. As a result, the FTSE100 and UK markets were sold off, with the FTSE100 closing Friday’s session down almost 2%. Germany’s DAX closed the last trading session of the week also down 1.97% and the French CAC took the biggest hit, down 2.28% on Friday.

What to watch today:

• Ahead of the local trading day, markets are expecting a sharp 1.25% decline upon open as investor sentiment is dampened by rising interest rates around the world.
• The stock going ex-dividend today is IMDEX Limited (ASX:IMD), which could be a good opportunity to buy in if you have been thinking about these stocks as stocks going ex-dividend generally trade lower on the ex-dividend date.
• Taking a look at commodities, global recession fears have caused commodity prices to plunge with crude trading at an eight-month low, down 5.7% around US$78.74 per barrel, brent is down 4.15% at US$86.71 per barrel, gold is down 1.6% lower at US$1643 per ounce, while iron ore is up 0.5% at US$101 per tonne.
• There is no economic data released today but US durable goods orders for August is out on Tuesday while New Home Sales data in the US for August is released on Wednesday.

Trading Ideas:

• Trading Central has identified a bullish signal on Technology Metals Australia (ASX:TMT) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 69-days indicating the stock price may rise over this same amount of time from the close of $0.35 per share to the range of $0.48 to $0.52 according to standard principles of technical analysis.
• Bell Potter has downgraded its price target on Catapult Group (ASX:CAT) to $1.10 from $1.00 but maintains a hold rating on the global sports analytics company amid downgraded revenue forecasts over the coming financial years as well as market movements and lower expected top line growth.