\n\tBy Greg Peel<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Dow closed up 44 points or 0.4% while the S&P gained 0.9% to 1172 and the Nasdaq<\/span> starred with a 1.5% gain.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd now to everyone's favourite<\/span> show, In Europe Tonight:<\/p>\n \n\tA spokesman for French president Nicholas Sarkozy<\/span> stated last night that nothing would happen. The same can't be said for tonight however, when Sarkozy<\/span> and German chancellor Angela Merkel will make a joint statement with respect to the Greek situation. Whatever it is Sarkozy<\/span> and Merkel are going to say, no one was letting on last night.<\/p>\n \n\tThe statement will come ahead of Friday night's scheduled meeting of EU finance ministers in Warsaw, at which US Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner<\/span> will be a guest attendee. <\/p>\n \n\tLast night the Italian government auctioned E6.5bn<\/span> of sovereign bonds. Within the package were E3.9bn<\/span> of five-years which settled at a yield of 5.6%, up from 4.9% at the last similar auction in July. While markets were soothed by the fact there were any buyers at all, rising yields are not comforting and the line in the sand is considered to be 6%, beyond which debt becomes too expensive to service vis-a-vis<\/span> GDP.<\/p>\n \n\tTonight the Italian lower house will vote on the latest budget austerity package, previously passed by the upper house.<\/p>\n \n\tA Reuters report last night suggested Greece would miss its end-September privatisation<\/span> target, for which it must sell of state-owned assets to a total of E50bn<\/span> by 2015 in order to reduce debt and qualify for its next bail-out tranche<\/span>.<\/p>\n \n\tUnsubstantiated rumours<\/span> also circulated, in the wake of talks between Italy and a Chinese sovereign wealth fund regarding debt purchases, that the BRICs<\/span> in general were now talking to Greece in the same capacity.<\/p>\n \n\tNot one of your more exciting episodes. But things may well hot up tonight.<\/p>\n \n\tOn Wall Street last night the Dow crossed over the flatline<\/span> no less than six times as it bounced around in a vacuum of no new news from across the Atlantic. Its high-low range of 150 points was the tightest since July 26 and compares with an average range since July of 320 points. Europe aside, things may hot up on Wall Street as the week unfolds given scheduled releases of retail sales, industrial production, inflation and manufacturing activity data.<\/p>\n \n\tThe US Treasury auctioned US$21bn<\/span> of benchmark ten-year bonds last night which settled at a record low 2.00%. This was nevertheless a higher yield than had been anticipated given rather muted demand. Foreign central banks bought 48.5%, up from the running average of 47%. The surplus economies are not abandoning US debt for stressed euro-debt just yet. The ten-year closed the session at 1.98%.<\/p>\n \n\tThe euro was able to tick up a bit last night, sending the US dollar index down slightly to 77.05. The Aussie is also off a bit at US$1.0319. Buyers returned to gold last night now that the sellers-for-cash have gone quiet again, pushing the resilient currency up US$19.80 to US$1834.20\/oz.<\/p>\n \n\tBase metals in London were mostly weaker but not materially so, while West Texas crude stole the spotlight in rallying US$1.60 to US$89.79\/bbl<\/span> when Brent fell US36c<\/span> to US$111.89\/bbl<\/span>. Having peaked at over US$26, the Brent-WTI<\/span> spread has fallen 16% recently as momentum builds in the unwinding of spread trades.<\/p>\n \n\tThe SPI<\/span> Overnight rose 3 points.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter the weak but hardly surprising loss of business confidence in Australia in August noted by yesterday's NAB survey, today we see just how many consumers ran to hide under the bed last month when Westpac releases its equivalent report.<\/p>\n \n\t[Note: All paying members at FNArena<\/span> are being reminded they can set an email alert specifically for The Overnight Report. Go to Portfolio and Alerts in the Cockpit and tick the box in front of The Overnight Report. You will receive an email alert every time a new Overnight Report has been published on the website.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wall Street bounced around in a relatively tight range last night as no new news emerged from Europe. Dow up 44.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[23,21,29,41,22,46,26],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}