Morning Briefing: Cautious gains for equities, oil hits $50

Cautious gains for equities, oil hits $50

Equity markets have shown some cautious risk-taking Friday despite ongoing political wobbles in Washington.
Meanwhile, oil prices have risen overnight as investors bet on an OPEC production cut extension. US crude hit $50 in early trading.

Asian indexes closed mostly higher with Australia’s ASX the notable loser of the session as banks lost value along with industrials.

European markets are trending higher with German producer prices edging upwards, and Greece passing new austerity measures which its lawmakers expect to mean a further injection of credit for the flagging economy.
Elsewhere, Brazilian markets will react to corruption claims directed at its president. Shares plunged Thursday as the news broke.

Wall Street and Toronto are expected to open higher. A range of Canadian data is due including consumer prices and retail sales.
 

	Latest	1 month ago	1 year ago
North America (previous session)
US Dow Jones	20,663.02 (+0.27 per cent)	+1.27 per cent	+18.51 per cent
TSX Composite	15,277.20 (+0.02 per cent)	-1.77 per cent	+10.57 per cent
Europe (at 5.00am ET)
UK FTSE	7,472.78 (+0.49 per cent)	+5.04 per cent	+23.45 per cent
German DAX	12,643.57 (+0.43 per cent)	+5.22 per cent	+29.07 per cent
Asia (at close)
China CSI 300	3,403.85 (+0.17 per cent)	-1.22 per cent	+11.15 per cent
Japan Nikkei	19,590.76 (+0.19 per cent)	+6.29 per cent	+17.69 per cent
Other Data (at 5.00am ET)
Oil (Brent)	Oil (WTI)	Gold	Can. Dollar
53.23 (+1.37 per cent)	50.00 (+1.32 per cent)	1251.00 (-0.14 per cent)	U$0.7365
			Aus. Dollar
			U$0.7450

Automakers settle airbag lawsuit

Four vehicle manufacturers have settled a class-action lawsuit over their use of faulty Takata airbags.

Toyota, Mazda, BMW and Subaru will pay a combined $553 million while others including Honda, Ford and Nissan have yet to be settled, Reuters reports.

The settlement is not an admission of fault or liability by the auto makers who said in a joint statement that the scale and scope of the recall is the reason for their agreement.

In total around 16 million vehicles from 19 manufacturers have been recalled.