Market update: Stock rally pauses; all eyes averted from Syria to the Fed’s meeting next week – 12.09.2013

Source: Henderson Global Investors

Wall Street stocks closed Wednesday’s session with mixed results. While the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 gained 0.9% and 0.3% respectively, the Nasdaq fell slightly, by 0.1%, on a sell-off in Apple shares. The latter fell 5.4% extending a two-day decline as investors were disappointed with the company’s latest product update released on Tuesday. While fears of a strike on Syria are receding with diplomatic efforts underway, the focus seems to be turning fully to the 2-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting in the US next Tuesday and Wednesday. Markets are now expecting a mini-tapering announcement of the $85bn-a-month asset purchase programme.

Asian markets mostly lacked direction overnight. A stronger yen, as Japanese machinery orders came below expectations, sent the Nikkei down 0.3%. Australian shares shrugged off the news that unemployment was up, with the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index adding 0.3% to Wednesday’s five-year high. The central banks of New Zealand and South Korea both left their policy rates unchanged at 2.5%. Trading in European markets this morning is reasonably firm on expectations of upbeat data on industrial production for the region, to be released later today. At the time of writing the FTSE Eurofirst 300 was up 0.1%, but the FTSE 100 was higher at 0.2%.