Live updates: Wall St slips ahead of Chinese trade talks, ASX set for small gain

To paraphrase Sir John Falstaff, Wall Street investors saw discretion as the better part of value ahead of the start of trade talks with China over the weekend.

At the close of business on Friday, the Dow had slipped 0.3%, the S&P 500 was marginally down, and the Nasdaq ended the week flat.

While the sentiment around global trade tensions has improved in recent weeks, traders paused the recent rally, waiting for something more concrete than “vibes” to come out the meeting in Geneva between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng.

The vibes, at least from the US point of view is that “substantial progress” has been made, while the Chinese delegation says an “important consensus has been reached.”

The easing of UK tariffs hardly moved the dial late last week, given the UK already runs a deficit with US, but it does show that the Trump administration is keen to be seen to be doing deals.

India is also keen to cut its tariff gap with the US – it’s not surprising to want friendly relations with the US when the missiles start whizzing across the border with Pakistan.

But progress with China is the main game, and by a long way, and President Trump’s gut feeling that an 80% tariff on Chinese goods is arguably better than 145% but still isn’t going to get a deal done.

Rosenblatt Securities managing director Michael James told Reuters that the market is wary of anything potentially negative coming from the US/China meetings.

“With the Geneva meeting this weekend, there’s a little bit of anxiety and certainly a fair amount of profit taking given the strength we’ve had,” Mr James said.

“We’ve all become accustomed in the last month to the impact negative and positive from any social media headlines coming from the White House.

“While it’s certainly been more pleasant the last few weeks with the market trending higher … there’s still a fair amount of uncertainty.”

The global MSCI share index rose 0.1% on Friday, largely due to solid buying across Europe, with Germany’s Dax (+0.6%) ending the day at a record high.

The US dollar index fell 0.3%.

The Australian dollar (+0.2%) was one of many currencies gaining against the greenback.

Oil traders had a more positive view of the Geneva talks.

The global benchmark Brent crude rose 1.7% to $US 63.91/barrel, to be more than 4% higher over the week.

Gold traders, on the other hand, took the President’s gut feeling at face value, seeing it more as negative than a positive, so bid the price of gold up 1.1% to $US3,340/ounce.

Bitcoin’s resurgence continued and was holding well above $US100,000 over the weekend.