Bernard Hickey details the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am in association with Bank of New Zealand, including news the death of Osama bin Laden caused a brief rally on global stock markets and the US dollar.
The oil price fell immediately on hopes the death of the leader of Al Qaeda may ease Middle East tensions and improve oil supply security. But within a few hours those hopes had evaporated as markets realised little has changed in the global economic outlook or in oil supply output.
America is still borrowing to pay for two major wars and its economy is still struggling to recover from under a mountain of debt. North African and Middle Eastern turmoil is unrelated to Al Qaeda and Chinese/Indian demand for restricted oil supplies continues to mount.
The Dow and S&P 500 initially rose as much as 0.5% as Americans celebrated the death of the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks. But in late trade the markets were flat. See a markets wrap here at CNN.
The oil price initially fell sharply but was down just 0.4% in late New York trade. See more here at Bloomberg.
Signs that US factory output was weaker in April than March also weighed on sentiment, although the result in the Institute of Supply Management was better than expected.
Elsewhere, Stuff reported notorious low-ball share offeror Bernard Whimp as saying he had retired after the Financial Markets Authority used tougher powers on its first day to impose new disclosure requirements on Whimp. He is thought to have made profits of more than NZ$2 million by buying shares directly and cheaply from shareholders in widely held stocks.
Meanwhile, the silver price slumped from record highs after changes to margin rules. See more here at Bloomberg.
Elsewhere, the US dollar weakened in late trade to multi-year lows as investors continued to worry about US interest rates being stuck at 0% until early next year at the earliest, fueling inflation and devaluing the world's reserve currency.
The Australian dollar rallied briefly to a post-float high over US$1.10 and the New Zealand dollar was solid over 80 USc.
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