Investment markets and key developments over the past week

Share markets have gone from goodbye to good buy over the last week. The turmoil in global share markets continued into the past week, but signs of stabilisation and improvement gradually started to appear resulting in several share markets actually rising over the last week. Believe it or not, this started in Australian shares on Tuesday as buyers saw value around the 5000 mark on the ASX 200 and then continued as China eased monetary policy, Fed officials indicated that a September interest rate hike was looking less likely if global growth worries persist and global investors refocussed on good US and Eurozone economic data. Despite a strong turnaround Chinese shares still fell 6.9% over the week and Japanese shares lost 1.5%, but US and Australian shares gained 0.9% and Eurozone shares rose 1.2%. Commodities traced out a similar path, falling initially before rebounding sharply with metals and oil up over the week. The turn up in share markets also saw bond yields rise and the $A recover partially from a low of $US0.7050 early in the week. (VIEW LINK)