The rally on Wall Street continued overnight as investor fears of a regional and global banking crisis continued to ease as President Biden urged federal regulators to take up a set of reforms to safeguard the banking system.

Weekly jobless claims in the US increased by 7000 to 19,800, in yet another sign the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate action to tackle inflation in the US is starting to take effect. The rise in jobless claims is also another sign the fed could begin easing its rate hike stance. The Dow Jones closed 0.43% higher on Thursday while the S&P500 added 0.57% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 0.73%.

Over in Europe, markets continued to rally as investor fears of a banking crisis also continued to ease in the region. UBS shares jumped 3.4% again on Thursday as investors responded to the news of Sergio Ermotti retaking his position as CEO ahead of the Credit Suisse takeover. Germany’s DAX added 1.26%, the French CAC added 1.06% and, in the UK, the FTSE100 rose 0.74%.

Locally yesterday, the ASX jumped 1.02% joining the global rally as banking crisis fears ease, with technology stocks leading the gains yesterday as the sector closed up 1.7%. Materials and Financial stocks also felt some relief yesterday following a week of turbulence in these respective sectors.

What to watch today: 

• Ahead of the local trading session here in Australia the SPI futures are anticipating the local market to open 0.53% higher, extending on the global rally from the past 2-sessions.
• Taking a look at commodities, crude oil is trading almost 2% higher at US$74.37/barrel, gold is up 0.81% at US$1979.94/ounce and iron ore is also up 0.8% at US$125.50/tonne. 
• Stocks trading ex-dividend today include Harvey Norman (ASX:HVN), and Russell Investments High Dividend Australian Shares ETF (ASX:RDV). 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.
• The Aussie dollar is buying US$0.67, 89.05 Japanese Yen, 54.89 British Pence and NZ$1.07.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter has downgraded its price target on Synlait Milk (ASX:SM1) from $3.20 to $2.55 but maintain a buy rating on the company as the dairy company faces a few unknowns in the current environment including whether it can deliver acceptable returns on the new Pokeno nutritionals customer, as well as successfully navigating A2 Milk’s new-GB registration in China. The company also faces higher costs of production due to the volume uplift for the new Pokeno customer.
• Trading Central has identified a bullish signal on Regis Resources (ASX:RRL) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 26-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may rise from the close of $2.00 to the range of $2.17 to $2.21 according to standard principles of technical analysis.