China Stock Market May Spin Its Wheels On Monday

The China stock market moved higher in back-to-back sessions, advancing almost 20 points or 0.6 percent along the way. The Shanghai Composite Index now sits just above the 2,980-point plateau although it figures to run out of steam on Monday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is negative, with oil and technology shares likely to lead the way lower. The European and U.S. markets were down and the Asian bourses figure to follow that lead.

The SCI finished slightly higher again on Friday following a mixed performance from the financials and weakness from the properties.

For the day, the index perked 5.18 points or 0.17 percent to finish at 2,982.31 after trading between 2,955.12 and 2,986.24. The Shenzhen Composite Index rose 5.48 points or 0.34 percent to end at 1,610.07.

Among the actives, Bank of China rose 0.21 percent, while China Construction Bank sank 0.79 percent, China Merchants Bank collected 0.47 percent, Bank of Communications and Yankuang Energy both eased 0.13 percent, China Life Insurance shed 0.62 percent, Jiangxi Copper tanked 2.03 percent, Aluminum Corp of China (Chalco) retreated 1.36 percent, PetroChina tumbled 2.25 percent, China Petroleum and Chemical (Sinopec) fell 0.31 percent, Huaneng Power dipped 0.11 percent, China Shenhua Energy slid 0.19 percent, Gemdale stumbled 2.14 percent, Poly Developments plunged 3.06 percent, China Vanke slumped 1.12 percent and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was unchanged.

The lead from Wall Street is soft as the major averages opened mixed but quickly turned lower and spent the rest of the day solidly in the red.

The Dow tumbled 377.49 points or 0.93 percent to finish at 40,287.53, while the NASDAQ sank 144.28 points or 0.81 percent to end at 17,726.94 and the S&P 500 lost 39.59 points or 0.71 percent to close at 5,505.00.

For the week, the NASDAQ plunged 3.7 percent and the S&P 500 tumbled 2.0 percent, but the Dow rose 0.7 percent.

With concerns about the outlook for tech stocks recently weighing on Wall Street, negative sentiment may have been generated by a major IT outage.

The operations of major banks, media outlets, hospitals and airlines worldwide were affected due to the widespread outage, which was purportedly caused by an update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD).

Oil prices fell to a four-week low on Friday amid concerns about the outlook for demand from China and on renewed hopes of a ceasefire in Gaza, while a firm dollar also weighed on oil prices. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for August sank $2.69 or 3.25 percent at $80.13 a barrel, the lowest settlement since June 17.

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