Wall Street Rises on Falling Oil

The Dow-oil ratio continues to grow. A 2% drop in oil translated to a 2.4% gain in the Dow Jones index last night. It helped that consumer confidence was up too.

And that housing market release we were worried about earlier in the week? It was miserable. It was ugly. It was woe-begone. But it wasn’t as bad as analysts thought it could’ve been.

US house prices have fallen 16% in the last year. That takes a lot of home-owners back to 2004 prices.

But last night, the flavour of the Dow was oil. House prices won’t be dragging down the ASX today, reader. They’ll have to wait for another occasion. And there’s still an opportunity for shares to trip up later in the week. American unemployment figures are tagged and released into the wild on Friday.