Australian shares are expected to build on recent gains by opening higher on Friday after stocks in New York finished barely changed overnight.
Futures trading indicates the ASX 200 index will rise 0.17% at 10 am AEDT (11 pm GMT Thursday) as the December share price index futures contract was quoted 15 points above the previous settlement at 8,630 points, at the time of writing.
United States benchmark averages finished broadly flat as investors looked ahead to next week’s Federal Reserve decision, which is expected to result in a drop in interest rates.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.1% to 47,850.9, gained 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.2% after the release of jobs data from different sources.
"Everybody's waiting around to see what the Fed thinks with any of this data that they've seen come in because the last comments from (Fed Chair Jerome) Powell were a little bit on the hawkish side, but cuts are fully expected," Horizon Investments Head of Research and Quantitative Strategies Mike Dickson was quoted saying in this Reuters article.
"The short of it is the gold standard is payrolls, and we just don't have an updated figure there, so that's going to really move the needle one way or the other on any future rate policy paths."
Burrell Stockbroking wealth adviser Adam Dight said it was time for Australian investors to review their shareholdings and buy stocks with exposure to overseas consumers and scale.
“It hasn't been much of a week. It's all about now cleaning out your portfolio again pre-Jan 1 and (think about) what do you want to own, come the interim (results) in February,” he said.
He recommended stocks like ALS (ASX: ALQ), Sonic Healthcare (ASX: SHL), ResMed (ASX: RMD), Amcor (ASX: AMC) and Brambles (ASX: BXB).
“You have to cherry-pick again. (Go) overweight (companies) with overseas earnings and cherry-pick the market darlings that do 10% compound (returns). It's time to once again throw out the dogs," Dight said.
The Australian market ended a little stronger on Thursday with the S&P/ASX 200 putting on 0.3% to 8,618.4 points.
In the bond markets, yields on Australian Government bonds rose, with two-year rates gaining 2.08% to 3.975% and 10-year rates adding 1.75% to 4.70%.
