Mid-week the world’s financial markets closed mixed again in anticipation of the Federal Reserve's decision about the quantitative easing (QE) program. In Europe namely, the British FTSE 100 grew 0.81 percent up to 6,453.87 points, the German DAX gained 0.16 percent up to 9,082.81 points whereas the French CAC 40 shed 0.05 percent finishing the trading session at 4,110.64 points.
Russian indices also showed an upward trend – the MICEX index advanced 1.7 percent up to 1,439.58 points, and the RTS index grew 0.96 percent up to 1,059.62 points.
In the USA, stock indices slumped after the Federal Reserve announced that it would end QE this November. Due to that, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.18 percent down to 16,974.31 points, the Standard & Poor's 500 dropped 0.14 percent down to 1,982.31 points, and the NASDAQ Composite lost 15.07 points closing at 4,549.23.
According to the Federal Reserve’s statements, QE is no longer needed as the US labor market has considerably improved its prospects and the American economy has become strong enough. With this, the Federal Reserve plans to keep the interest rate at 0-0.25% per annum for quite a while.
On the NYMEX, the price of WTI oil futures increased by $0.78 up to $82.20 a barrel. The ICE price of Brent oil futures rose by $1.09 making $87.12 a barrel.
On the Forex market, the US dollar has gone up. However, EUR/USD is still within the correction range and hasn’t even reached its bottom boundary of 1.2510 yet.
Anna Gorenkova
NordFX Analyst