EUROPE

Greece

Evangelos Venizelos, leader of the socialist Pasok party, has handed back his mandate as he cannot form a coalition government. Two attempts by leaders of other parties earlier this week have also failed. Tomorrow Karolos Papoulias, President of Greece, will try to facilitate an agreement. If no agreement can be reached by next Thursday (17 May 2012) then the Greeks will go back to the polls. [More]

USA MARKET

US economy

• More than 200,000 beneficiaries of the 79-week unemployment insurance program will lose those benefits next week. (States affected: CA, CO, CT, FL, IL, NC, PA, TX)

Commodities

• Gold Futures (Jun): down $11.50 to $1,584/oz
• Oil Futures (WTI LSC Jun): down $0.95 to $96.13/barrel, continuing to benefit from the strengthening USD.

Treasury yields

• 30-year: 3.01%
• 10-year: 1.84%
• 5-year: 0.75%

Share market indices

• S+P 500: 1,354 -0.34%
• DJIA: 12,821 -0.27%
• NASDAQ: 2,934 +0.01%

Tech stock price movements

• Substantial rises (more than 2.0%)
  • Netflix [NASDAQ:NFLX]: up 6.85% to $77.38
  • Nvidia [NASDAQ:NVDA]: up 6.4% to $13.21
• Substantial falls (more than 2.0%)
  • Zynga [NASDAQ:ZNGA]: down 4.35% to $7.48
  • LinkedIn [NASDAQ:LNKD]: down 3.77% to $107.23

PORTFOLIO

NASDAQ

• Apple [AAPL] $566.71 -0.67%
• Amazon [AMZN] $227.68 +0.44%
• Google [GOOG] $605.23 -1.37%

NYSE

• Linkedin [LNKD] $107.23 -3.77%
• VMware [VMW] $102.32 +1.13%

AUSTRALIAN CURRENCY

Portfolio valuation rate (USD/AUD): 1.0059

Australian exchange rates