Daily Market Summary: Oil, Asia, Wall Street, and Oslo Stock Exchange

Of the pre-trade for IG Trading, there is a marginally weak increase of 0.5 per cent from the start. Nordnet analyst Roger Berntsen believes Oslo Børs’ main index will open flat within the range from and including -0.2 per cent to and including 0.4 per cent.

Oil

The price of a barrel of Brent North Sea oil rose by 0.70 percent to 76.39 dollars a barrel. The price of WTI oil rises by 0.49 percent to 72.21 dollars a barrel. The TTF gas rises by 0.60 percent to 30.39 euros per megawatt.

By comparison, Brent oil rose 0.25 percent to $75.43 a barrel, and WTI oil rose 0.3 percent to $71.34 a barrel at the close on May 16. The main index fell 0.47 percent to 1,210.96 points.

On Thursday, the market value of the Government Pension Fund abroad passed NOK 15,000 billion. In total, SPU increased by just over NOK 2,500 billion so far this year.

In addition, it can be mentioned that the dollar strengthens slightly against currencies such as the euro, the pound and the Chinese renminbi by 0.04, 0.06 and 0.14 per cent respectively. The exchange rate between kroner and the dollar is relatively stable with a slight increase of 0.01 per cent to 10.918 kroner per dollar.

Asia

In Japan, the Nikkei rose by 0.72 percent, to 30,795 points. So does the Topix index, which is up 0.11 percent to 2,160. It is happening ahead of the meeting between the G7 countries starting in Hiroshima today.

On Friday night Norwegian time, the inflation figures for April were published. There, annual inflation increased by 3.5 per cent, up from 3.2 per cent in March. That is higher than Trading Economics’ projection of 3.2 per cent. Core inflation on an annual basis rose in April to 3.40 per cent, from 3.10 per cent in March. The monthly increase in inflation was 0.60 per cent, up from 0.30 per cent in March.

On Thursday, the import and export figures for Japan were published, where exports increased by 2.6 per cent, while imports fell by 2.3 per cent in April.

The Shanghai Composite in China strengthened by 0.13 percent to 3,301, but the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong fell by 0.96 percent to 19,538.

In South Korea, the Kospi index rises by 0.76 percent to 2,534 points, and the S&P/ASX 200 index in Australia rises 0.63 percent to 7,282.

Wall Street

Wall Street ended Thursday in the green for the second day in a row. The technology-heavy Nasdaq rose the most with Netflix as one of the winners.

This is how the leading indices ended:

• industry Dow Jones ended up 0.35 percent.
• The Technology Exchange Nasdaq rose 1.51 percent.
• The aggregate index S&P 500 rose 0.94 percent.

The S&P 500 ended at its highest level in nine months, while the Nasdaq has not been higher since last April.

Oslo Stock Exchange

The previous trading day on the Oslo Stock Exchange was 16 May. The day was characterized by quarterly figures, changes in chiefs, in addition to the news that the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the KrF have left the salmon tax negotiations, which had a heavy impact on the salmon shares.