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Share market falls for seventh straight week
The local share market has endured its seventh consecutive losing week as interest rate hikes and fears about the stability of the global banking system weighed on sentiment.
The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index finished the trading week yesterday afternoon down 13.4 points, or 0.19%, to 6,955.2, after having been down as much as 0.65% in the first 15 minutes of trading, Australian Associated Press reports.
For the week the ASX200 lost 39.6 points, or 0.57%. Its seven-week losing streak is its longest such stretch since nine consecutive weeks of losses during the global financial crisis in mid-2008.
Recent weeks have seen the failure of Silicon Valley Bank in the US and the Swiss investment bank, Credit Suisse. On Friday shares in Deutsche Bank, another European investment bank that has struggled since the GFC, fell 14%.
Overnight the Bank of England raised rates by 25 basis points, a widely anticipated move after official data released Wednesday showed higher than expected inflation, with consumer prices rising 10.4 per cent in the year to February.
While some economists have suggested that the global banking chaos might prompt the Reserve Bank to pause its rate hike campaign at its next meeting a week from Tuesday, Tadgell said he thought it was “highly probable” that Australia’s central bank would again hike rates.
The ASX’s 11 official sectors were mixed on Friday, with five gaining ground and six losing it.
On Friday, NAB was the biggest loser among the Big Four banks, falling 1.6% to $27.18. CBA dropped 1.2% to $95.84, ANZ retreated 1.1% to $22.52 and Westpac subtracted 0.6% to $21.20.