Markets: Weak, Uninspiring Week

Markets around the world generally finished higher last week, but they didn't inspire.

US shares ended a two-week losing streak last week, but were hardly convincing.

The Dow added 65.16 points, or 0.5%, to 13,029.26 on Friday and ended up 1.4% for the week, its first weekly gain in three.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 1.61 points, or 0.1%, to 1,378.53, a gain of 0.7% for the week.

But another fall in the price of Apple shares saw Nasdaq off 7.1 points, or 0.2%, at 3,000.45, down 0.2% from the previous Friday's close and the third negative week in a row.

Apple shares fell 2.5% to $US572.98, off more than 10% from $644, the record intraday high reached April 10.

That makes back to back falls of 4% or more for Apple ahead of its first quarter earnings result tomorrow night our time.

That report, plus the post Fed meeting statement early Thursday morning and new interest rate forecasts, will be the defining reports for all markets in the coming week.

Any change to the basic Fed interest rate forecast of rates to remain at the current zero to 0.2% until "late 2014" will see markets sold off.

Certainly the five week rally in US bonds will end.

They closed stronger last week with the yield on 10 year bonds at 1.97%.

And Apple will have to boost earnings significantly to stop the slide in its share price and help steady the wider market.

In Australia our market will open modestly higher today after the small gains on the share price future contract overnight Friday.

The SPI rose 7 points to 4375.

The market saw a rise of 1% last week for the ASX 200.

In fact the Australia market is showing some unexpected resilience in the face of offshore volatility.

It last showed this underlying strength in January, and lost ground in February and March as offshore investors fretted about China.

But in the past couple of weeks there has been a change in offshore sentiment to China and a hard landing is no longer the fear.

That will be tested later today with the early results from the April survey of Chinese manufacturing from HSBC/Markit.

The AMP's Dr Shane Oliver says the new found resilience for Australian shares has seen "the ASX200 actually pushing further beyond the previous ceiling of 4300 over the last week as investors are starting to recognise value in the local market (after two years of relative underperformance), helped by the $A being off its highs, RBA rate cuts looking imminent and China starting to look a bit less worrying".

But he cautions that after a strong March quarter, "it's now clear that we have entered a rougher patch in global share markets triggered by renewed worries about Europe and a softer patch of data in the US with investors naturally fearful of a re-run of the last few years where a strong start to the year saw shares peak around April only to fall 15 to 20% over the next few months.

"Our assessment is that this rough patch could continue for a few more months.

"However, any correction should be mild - say 5 to 10% rather than 15 to 20% - and we still see share markets higher by year end."

The Aussie dollar closed around $US1.0380 ahead of the CPI's release on Tuesday.

Our terms of trade worsened in the March quarter with a 7% drop in export prices more than offsetting the 1.2% fall in import prices.

The terms of trade fell 4.7% in the December quarter.

Elsewhere in Asia, the Nikkei fell 0.4% on Friday, South Korea's Kospi lost 1.3%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index declined 0.4%, while the Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.1%.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 0.7% last week, erasing last week's small 0.1% gain.

South Korea lost 1.7%, Tokyo's Nikkei shed 0.8%, but Hong Kong rose 1.5% and the Shanghai market was up 2% in one of the strongest weeks for some time.

And in Europe, The Stoxx 600 Index rose 1.7% last week, after four weeks of losses.

That was despite more weakness in Spain and Italy.

Bloomberg said markets rose in 13 of the 18 western European markets.

London's FTSE 100 added 2.1%, Germany's DAX was 2.5% higher, but France's CAC 40 was little changed as investors fretted ahead of the first round of Presidential elections tomorrow.

Spain's IBEX 35 Index lost 2.9% after hitting a three year low on Thursday.

And commodities also had a weak week.

Gold edged higher on Friday with the Comex futures price for June delivery ending up $US1.40 to settle at $US1,642.80 an ounce in New York.

On the week, gold lost 1%.

Crude oil futures ended higher Friday in New York.

Nymex crude for delivery in May rose 78c or 0.8%, to $US103.05 a barrel.

The contract expired at the end of floor trading Friday.

Over the week, prices rose by just 0.2%.

US natural gas prices edged higher on Friday.

May natural gas gained 2c or 1.1%, to settle at $US1.93 per million British thermal units.

On the week, however, prices declined 2.5%.

US gas prices are an important indicator for the BHP Billiton's share price.