(RTTNews) - The China stock market has finished lower in two of the last three trading days, since the end of the two-day winning streak in which it had added more than 70 points or 2.3 percent in the process. The Shanghai Composite Index finished just above the 2,960-point plateau, and now investors are anticipating that the market will turn back to the upside again at the opening of trade on Friday.

There may be some caution, however, with the opening of the new NASDAQ-style ChiNext board that features 28 companies debuting on the new board in Shenzhen.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is broadly optimistic, thanks mainly to better than expected GDP data out of the United States. Steel and gold stocks are expected to climb, as are financials, properties and airlines. The European and U.S. markets ended sharply higher, and the Asian markets are also expected to track higher - particularly after some heavy losses in the previous two trading days.

The SCI finished sharply lower on Thursday, dragged lower by weakness among the financial stocks and the commodities and miners.

For the day, the index dropped 70.86 points or 2.3 percent to finish at 2,960.47 after trading between 2,952.01 and 2,993.44. The Shenzhen Index lost 23.19 points or 2.2 percent to finish at 1043.95.

Among the decliners, China Merchants Bank shed 2.6 percent, while China Minsheng Banking fell 3.1 percent, Jiangxi Copper declined 5.0 percent and Western Mining plunged 5.4 percent.

The lead from Wall Street is firmly positive as stocks rose by substantial margins on Thursday, with the day’s upbeat third quarter GDP report generating risk appetite and driving traders to fund a rally in the stock market. The major averages all finished firmly in positive territory, partly offsetting their recent losses.

The Commerce Department said its advance estimate showed that GDP increased at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter compared to a 0.7 percent decrease in the second quarter. Economists had been expecting GDP to increase by 3.2 percent.

The considerable jump in GDP prompted some traders to shrug off the latest news on the labor market, even though today’s jobs report from the Labor Department showed that jobless claims did not fall by as much as economists had expected. The Labor Department said jobless claims in the week ended October 24th edged down to 530,000 from the previous week’s unrevised figure of 531,000. The drop was smaller than the decrease of about 6,000 expected by economists.

On the earnings front, Procter & Gamble (PG), Exxon Mobil (XOM), AutoNation (AN) and Motorola (MOT) were among the firms reporting on the day, largely topping bottom line forecasts but failing to meet revenue expectations.

In other news, the Federal Reserve concluded its treasury buyback program this morning, purchasing the last batch of $300 billion in bonds. The program began on March 25 as one of the measures to ease the grip of the recession on the U.S. economy. As one of the components of its economic intervention has wound to a close, economists have begun to speculate as to the next step in the Fed’s exit strategy, including a possible hike in interest rates.

The major averages all closed sharply higher, just off their best levels of the day. The Dow closed up by 199.89 points or 2.1 percent at 9,962.58, the NASDAQ advanced by 37.94 points or 1.8 percent to 2,097.55 and the S&P 500 rose by 23.48 points or 2.3 percent to 1,066.11.

In corporate news, CNOOC Limited said the company achieved a total net daily production of 647,382 barrels of oil equivalent for the third quarter of 2009, up 18.4 percent from last year.

The total unaudited revenue was approximately RMB 23.76 billion for the quarter, down 23.1 percent from the prior year quarter. In the third quarter of 2009, the Company’s net production offshore China increased by 9.7 percent to 524,412 BOE per day from the previous year.

Also, Simcere Pharmaceutical Group announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire a 74.49 percent stake in ChinaVax, a Cayman Islands company that, as its sole business, holds a 13.27 percent stake in Jiangsu Yanshen Biological Technology Stock Co. After the completion of this acquisition, and together with a 37.5 percent stake in Jiangsu Yanshen acquired in May 2009, Simcere said it will control a 50.77 percent stake in Jiangsu Yanshen.

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Posted in Categories: Eurozone, Releases, Stocks, UK, USA.

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