Housing data help US markets close marginally higher

By Gautam Broker, Research Analyst at CNBC-TV18

The US equity markets continued to consolidate on Wednesday, which ended marginally higher on positive US housing data. S&P 500 Index was largely unchanged over the last two days at 1461.

US Housing starts for August increased 2.3% to 7,50,000 as against 7,33,000 in July. Existing Homes sales rose by 7.8% to 4.82 million from 4.47 million in July.

Pace of improvement in US homes sales was the best in two years; US housing index was up by 2.2%

Eurozone data was weak yesterday: construction spending declined 0.3% MoM and 4.7% YoY.

Some positive newsflow from Greece: Reportedly making progress in deficit cuts. There was an indication that Greece is looking to sell properties overseas to meet Troika requirements.

Greece is also expecting to return to debt markets in 2014.

Spain reluctance to seek bailout a key sentiment overhang but yields have cooled over the last 2 days.

Spain's 10-year bond yields went back to 5.7% yesterday from 6%+ levels on Tuesday.

Market looked confident of today’s auction being successful; Spain is aiming to raise upto euro 4.5 billion

US markets at close: Dow Jones gained 0.1% at 13,577.9 and S&P 500 Index rose 0.1% to close at 1,461.1. Nasdaq was up 0.2%

European markets at close on Wednesday: DAX, CAC and FTSE were up 0.4-0.6%. Spain moved up 0.5% and Italy was up 0.2%

Bank of Japan (BoJ) increased asset buying program by 10 trillion yen yesterday (around USD 125 billion)

Currencies

Yesterday Euro hit a low of 1.299 from high of 1.317 on Monday.

Dollar index was hovering around 79

Yen was at 1 month low yesterday of 79.2 against the US dollar after BoJ eased.

Australian dollar remained around 1.04 to the US dollar

Commodities

Crude saw big fall, losing 7.5% in last three sessions

Yesterday Brent crude was down 3.7% to USD 107.9 a barrel.

WTI crude fell from a high of USD 99.5 a barrel on Monday to USD 91.8 a barrel today

Saudi Arabia says it concerned about high oil prices and expects to take measures.

EIA inventories yesterday showed jump of 8.5 million barrels

LME Copper was steady at USD 8350/tonne; Shanghai copper was down 0.5%  

Gold regained strength yesterday but failed to cross USD 1780 an ounce

What to watch out for

French, German, EZ PMI’s

US Weekly Jobless claims