Markets: Good Week, Now…?

Most markets had goodish gains Friday, with the US in a half day's trading mode after Thanksgiving.

Almost all markets had their best week for some time, continuing the string of incredible surges and slumps that have come to characterise this bear market.

But Wall Street may struggle to build on these gains given the doubts about the retail spending level in the important festive season sales that started Friday night, our time, and the crucial US unemployment figures Friday.

But interest rate cuts around the world will be a major positive.

Wall Street ended the holiday-shortened week in the black, ending a mid-month losing streak as investors were encouraged by the government's bailout of Citigroup and then the moves by the Fed and US Treasury to provide more than $US600 billion to support mortgage and credit card and other consumer markets. It will basically buy and finance home loans, car loans and credit cards for a while.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index had its best week since at least 1980 - rising 12%.

That reversed the previous week, when the S&P booked its lowest close since 1997. For the four-day week, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 9.7% and Nasdaq jumped 10.9%.

Still, big losses among financial and automaker shares made November among the worst months for Wall Street since the October 1987 stock market crash. The Dow fell 5.3%, the S&P 500 lost a considerable 7.5% and the Nasdaq lost 10.8%.

The yield on the US Treasury 10-year bond fell 0.31% to 2.93%. It touched 2.90% on Friday, the lowest since the Federal Reserve's daily records on the note began in 1962, and since 1958 on a monthly basis.