Amanda Morrall details key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am including a strong finish for equities markets; a potential drop in Australia's OCR tomorrow ; more U.S. labour stats; unemployment data for NZ; Goldman Sachs Jim O'Neill as next BOE governor?
A subdued start to the week this morning with some markets in Asia closed for holidays. That follows a strong end to the week with markets on both sides of the Atlantic moving up.
For the first time all month, the S&P 500 broke through the 1,400 mark, considered an important psychological hurdle. However the index is still down 0.4 percent for the month, even after gaining 1.8 percent for the week. See Yahoo Finance for more here.
Analysts will be watching for some key events and data out this week including a decision by the Reserve Bank of Australia on the Official Cash Rate there, currently set at 4.25%. Economists are predicting the bank will lower the benchmark rate by up to 50 basis points tomorrow afternoon, bowing to a contraction in retail spending and other economic pressures. According to this report carried by the Sydney Morning Herald U.S. corporate executives are becoming increasingly nervous about the outlook for Australia.
Meanwhile, more corporate earnings reports due out this week could further buoy last weeks' rally in the U.S. markets.
As of the close of Friday, 57 percent of the S&P 500 companies had reported first-quarter results. Of those 287 in the S&P 500 that had reported earnings, 72.8 percent posted results that topped analysts' expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data.(See Reuters story here for details).
Analysts will also be watching for a number of key labour reports due out this week starting with the ADP Employment Report on Wednesday, followed by the U.S. weekly jobless claims data on Thursday and then the government's jobs report for April (non-farm payrolls) on Friday.
Closer to home, the official unemployment rate is due out on Thursday along with the Labour Cost Index and Quarterly Employment Survey tomorrow. (See Radio New Zealand story here for analysis).
Unemployment in the final three months of last year fell 0.2% to 6.3%.
And finally, you just knew Goldman Sachs couldn't stay out of the news for longer than a week.
The investment bank is making headlines again, this time after a report from the Sunday Times suggesting that Jim O'Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, has been approached by Britain's finance ministry as a potential candidate for the job of Governor of the Bank of England. The incumbent, Mervyn King, is due to retire in June 2013. (Yahoo finance has the full story).
O'Neill, who now famously coined the term 'BRIC' in 2001 to describe how the economic clout of Brazil, Russia, India and China would challenge the West's economic dominance, would not comment on the story.
Whoever gets the job as the next BOE governor will be tasked with helping to steer the U.K. out of its second recession since the global financial crisis.
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