Wall St finished higher on Thursday, however, is still on track for its worst month of the year. All three major indexes finished in the green with the Dow Jones up 0.35%, the S&P 500 up 0.59% and the tech-heavy-Nasdaq up 0.87%.

The US ten-year treasury hit a 15 year high as data came out on Thursday highlighting the still-resilient labour market with jobless claims coming in lower than expected. In terms of US stocks, the communications services performed strongly with a 2% gain in Meta Platforms, whilst Intel and Cisco Systems rallied 1.6% and 1.3% respectively.

Over in Europe, markets closed higher, snapping a 5-day losing streak following strong performances in mining and banking stocks. The STOXX600 closed 0.36% higher thanks to help from the basic resources sector following a rise in Chinese industrial profits. The German DAX and the French CAC finished Thursday strongly, rallying 0.70% and 0.63%, whilst the UK’s FTSE100 closed marginally higher by 0.11%.

Locally yesterday, the ASX 200 ended Thursday marginally lower by 0.08% with most sectors finishing in the red, including the consumer discretionary sector which lost over 1%. This was offset by the energy sector which saw a 2.96% increase yesterday.

Washington H Soul Pattinson results were released yesterday, leaving investors disappointed despite increasing dividends by over 20%. There could possibly be two contributing factors to this. Investors may have been taking profits from the recent run the share price has been on or it could be from Brickworks releasing results on the same day with underlying profit falling 32% in FY23. Washington H Soul Pattinson is the largest share holder in Brickworks, so the rising costs that impacted Brickworks underlying profits may have caused investor sentiment to slide with both Brickworks and Washington H Soul Pattinson closing Thursday’s session down over 6% each.

What to watch today: 

• The Australian share market is set to open higher, with the SPI futures suggesting a rise of 0.64% at the open this morning.
• In terms of commodities,
  • Oil is down 2.07% to 91 US dollars and 74 cents a barrel with official data showing that US crude inventories fell by 2.2 million barrels last week. 
  • Gold has fallen 0.52% to 1864 US dollars an ounce following a strong US dollar. 
  • And iron ore is up 1.28% to 119 US dollars a tonne following a drop in supply with steel mills limiting production.

Trading Ideas: 

• Bell Potter maintains a buy rating on Nufarm (ASX:NUF), despite lowering the price target from $7 to $6.75 with a current share price of $4.72. The buy rating remains unchanged following predictions of a reasonable rebound in earnings in FY24.
• And Trading Ideas has identified a bearish signal in Hearts and Minds Investments (ASX:HM1), indicating that the stock price may fall from the close $2.30 to the range of $2.17-$2.19 over a pattern formed in 50 days, according to the standard principles of technical analysis.