IG Markets Morning Prices

Overnight, US markets fell marginally after an unexpected rise in weekly jobless claims and sluggish retail sales data.

Stocks finished well off their lows of the session with the Dow Jones Industrial average closing essentially flat, the NASDAQ down 0.5% while the S&P 500 lost 0.1%.

Heading into the session, markets were thought to be in a holding pattern ahead of tonight's non-farms payroll report but a disappointing rise in weekly jobless claims saw stocks open on the back foot. Economists had been expecting claims to fall by 2k but instead they rose by 19k to 479k continuing the rollercoaster ride for this metric.

In other economic news, retail sales data out from individual retailers was decidedly sluggish, and painting the picture of a cautious consumer.

On the session, technology, financials and consumer staples were modestly lower while the telecoms, consumer discretionary, energy and materials sectors all finished marginally higher.

Locally, we're looking at a flat open for the Australian market with the ASX 200 set to unwind 1 point higher at 4565.

While we may see a bit of weakness across the financial space today, the materials and energy sectors should offer some support or at the very least be relative outperformers.

While base metals were off fractionally overnight, the US materials index managed to eke out a small gain and both BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto posted advances in the London session with the latter delivering a record half year profit of US$5.7b after the Australian close yesterday. With broker upgrades likely for Rio on the back of its strong result and the BHP ADR pointing to a 0.4% rise for the local stock, the material sector should be reasonably solid.

The overriding theme for the day though will be flat and cautious trading. This is always the case if it's a Friday, if we have flat US leads, or we're waiting on non-farms payroll numbers. Today we have all three!