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Wall Street felt some relief on Thursday after new weekly jobless claims in the US ticked higher to 230,000 from 226,000 the week prior in a sign the Fed’s aggressive interest rate hikes are beginning to have an impact on the nation’s tight labour market. The slight uptick in jobless claims underpinned a rally on Thursday that saw the Dow Jones add 0.3%, the S&P500 lift 0.5% and the tech heavy Nasdaq added 0.9%.

Despite the slight relief rally, investors remain focused on the Fed’s FOMC meeting next week where it is expected another 50-basis points.

Over in Europe, markets closed mostly lower again as investor fears of a global recession continued to dominate sentiment across markets in the region. Germany’s DAX added just 0.02%, while the French CAC fell 0.14% and the UK’s FTSE100 lost 0.23%.

What to watch today:

• Ahead of the local trading session the SPI futures is anticipating the ASX to open 0.31% higher buoyed by the rally on Wall St overnight.
• On the commodities front, crude oil continues its decline trading 0.7% lower at US$71.51/barrel, coal is trading almost 1% lower at US$405/tonne, gold is up 0.11% at US$1788/ounce and iron ore is down 1.83% at US$107.50/tonne.
• The Australian dollar has strengthened to buy 67.73 US cents, 92.58 Japanese yen, 55.33 British pence and 1 New Zealand dollar and 6 cents.
• Taking a look at economic data out today, China’s inflation rate data for November is released around midday Australian eastern daylight time, with the market expecting a decline to 1.6% from 2.1% in October.

Trading Ideas:

• Trading Central has identified a bearish signal on Viva Energy Group (ASX:VEA) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 157-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may fall from the close of $2.66 to the range of $1.95-$2.10 according to standard principles of technical analysis.
• And Trading Central has also identified a bearish signal on Bravura Solutions (ASX:BVS) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 23-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may fall from the close of $0.78 to the range of $0.40-$0.48 according to standard principles of technical analysis.