Asian, European Markets Start The Week On a Positive Note

On Friday, Wall Street ended higher with the Dow closing up 2.3 percent, the NASDAQ composite gained35 points, while the S&P500 added 16 points.

On Monday, Asian indexes closed higher with Japan’s Nikkei up 0.32 percent, the Hong Kong blue chip, the Hang Seng index up 2.86 percent. In Sydney, the ASX100 was up 1.52 percent.

In Europe, in morning trading, the CAC40 in Paris climbed three quarters of a percent, while the Xetra DAX in Germany increased 0.27 percent (CNNMoney).

A recap of last week (Cambridge Forecast Group Blog): Topping market news last week, a move by the  Fed to slash the discount window rate to banks that borrow by 0.5 percent to 5.75 percent, brought markets safely back to positive territory in Europe and the U.S. – that happened in the early part of the week.

As the week progressed investors bought more and more stocks in marine transportation, iron, steel and export-related goods on the speculation that the Bank of Japan might hold off on rate incline this month. This pushed the market further up along with the depreciation of the yen in the foreign currency market, and indications that  stock markets in Asia was rebounding.

Nonetheless, with investors sitting on the sideliens,, the markets decined again by the end of the week as housing data and other economic indicators in the U.S. were about to be released – signaling cautious sentiment to traders.

What should you do about all the negative-hype in the markets?  Twofish writes in  Twofish’s Blog that there is a feeling out there among investors now that you don’t know what to expect. He compares it to the next Chinese financial crisis ( reverting back to the one in late February, i’m assuming). No one knows where it will come from and what to expect and what people think of tend to get etched in their minds. So the easiest solutions don’t even try to predict what’s going to happen in the stock markets….Just add you’re robustness to the markets – your contributions!of yet, because things that people think of, tend to get fixed. You can’t predict everything, and the best that you can do is to increase your “robusteness” to the markets.