Australian Market

US Market

U.S. stocks rose, building on their gains for the week, as investors parsed signs that the spread of the coronavirus could be stabilizing in hard-hit locations.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 773 points, or 3.4%. The S&P 500 gained 3.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 2.6%.

Positive signs in data on hospitalizations and intensive care admissions. suggest the number of new Covid-19 cases in New York could be stabilizing, though health officials
have warned that people can’t let down their guard.

Still, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus has risen, with nearly 50% more deaths Tuesday than any previous day in the epidemic, according to a Wall Street Journal
analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. Elsewhere, European countries with falling infection rates began easing their restrictions, while some Asian leaders called
for extended lockdowns to fight the pandemic.

Commodities

Gold futures ended slightly higher following a choppy trading session, failing to recoup recent losses that pulled prices down from their highest levels since 2012 earlier
this week.  Prices bounced around after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s March 3 and March 15 meetings showed that Fed staff’s worst-case scenario was that an economic recovery wouldn’t take hold until next year.

June gold was at $1,687 an ounce in electronic trading shortly after the release of the meeting minutes. It settled at $1,684.30 an ounce on Comex Wednesday, up 60 cents, or 0.04%. May settled 27.5 cents, or 1.8%, lower at $15.205 an ounce.

Oil Futures

U.S. oil prices ended 6.2% higher at $25.09/bbl., registering most of those big gains in the session’s final minutes amid reports OPEC will consider massive production cuts when it meets with Russia Thursday amid a huge decline in demand from coronavirus.

Crude prices also got a boost from weekly EIA data showing U.S. crude production fell to a six-month low of 12.4M bpd after output hit a near-record high 13M bpd the previous week. Also, a Texas oil regulator says a total of some 4M bpd of U.S. cuts are coming over the next few months. On the bearish side, though, the EIA report also showed a massive, 15.2M-bbl. rise in U.S. crude-oil inventories.

Forex

The U.S. dollar rose 0.4% against the euro and less than 0.1% against the yen. The euro weakened broadly after the EU failed to reach a deal on a coronavirus
response.
In the U.S., the S&P 500 entered a bull market with a 3.4% gain and 10-year Treasury yields rose above 0.74% on continued optimism the virus’s spread is slowing in some of the worst hit areas world-wide.  The WSJ Dollar Index rises a hair.

European Markets

European sharemarkets were mixed on Wednesday with investors focused on whether Eurozone finance ministers will agree an economic rescue package. The pan-European STOXX 600 index ended up 0.02%. The German Dax fell by 0.2%. And the UK FTSE was down by 0.5%. In London trade, shares of Rio Tinto fell by
2.1% while shares of BHP closed lower by 3.8%.

Asian Markets