Other Stockmarket News

ASX Glitch Trading Halt

The Australian stock market, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has been hit by a technical glitch and has imposed a trading halt an all trades. The suspension of trading comes at a time when many companies are holding AGMs, announcing full year results as well as a release of another European bailout deal. Sky News has reported that up to 6700 trades were completed before the halt. The last technical glitch was in February 28, 2011.

The nature of the problem is not known, leaving stock market investors unable to act on profit results and the latest economic developments in Europe.

Australian Dollar Soaring High

The Australian dollar is soaring high, with the AUD/USD cross rate reaching a high of 94.94 US cents just after midnight Sydney time, topping the two year record achieved on Friday of 94.69 US cents. In the past three years, the Australian dollar had averaged at 84.6 US cents. The Australian dollar hasn’t seen these price levels since it reached a 24 year record in 2008.

The US has lost jobs for the fifth month in a row at 5.5 percent as the jobless rate spiked (increasing by 0.5%) as a consequence of a class of students graduating schools and moving into the workforce. This is the largest spike in teenage unemployment since 1948. The spike was larger than every forecast from a Bloomberg News survey of economists. Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics in New York, has said that "Most of the economy looks in recession.'' Also Ten-year Treasury yields dropped to 3.92% in New York, from 4.04% on Thursday.

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