Calm before the storm? World markets are Fed-focused

Friday’s trading day is not expected to offer too many surprises as markets remain fairly stable ahead of next week’s meeting of the Fed. That will be a key focus for the next week with the decision on interest rates being announced Thursday. If rates do increase it will break an almost decade-long freeze. Canadian and UK interest rates have been held steady this week.

Asian indexes have ended the week broadly flat with European markets tipping slightly into the red in early trade. New York and Toronto are likely to open slightly lower having bucked a global trend to end higher in the previous session.

As well as US interest rates the markets will be weighing Chinese industrial output data Sunday and Eurozone inflation figures Wednesday. 

	Latest	1 month ago	1 year ago
North America (previous session)
US Dow Jones	16,330.40 (+0.47 per cent)	-6.16 per cent	-4.21 per cent
TSX Composite	13,569.89 (+0.28 per cent)	-5.86 per cent	-12.65 per cent
Europe (at 6.15am ET)
UK FTSE	6,148.52 (-0.12 per cent)	-7.74 per cent	-9.58 per cent
German DAX	10,128.91 (-0.80 per cent)	-10.31 per cent	+4.52 per cent
Asia (at close)
China CSI 300	3,347.19 (-0.31 per cent)	-17.69 per cent	+38.12 per cent
Japan Nikkei	18,264.22 (-0.19 per cent)	-11.86 per cent	+14.80 per cent
Other Data (at 6.15am ET)
Oil (Brent)	Oil (WTI)	Gold	Can. Dollar
48.02 (-1.78 per cent)	45.07 (-1.85 per cent)	1107.10 (-0.20 per cent)	U$0.7552
			Aus. Dollar
			U$0.7054