The market is up 178. 55 points are thanks to the big four banks. The SFE Futures were suggesting an 11 point rise in the market this morning despite a 448 point rise in Wall St in the last two sessions.

Dow Jones was up 187 overnight on good home sales numbers and a continued rebound in financials. It was up 261 at its peak. Bloomberg says the S&P is trading on a PE of 13.82x, the first time it has been below 14x since October 1990. Financials up 3.4% at the peak. Banks, brokerage and insurance sector up 0.7% and up 14% in a week. JP Morgan upped their offer price for Bear Stearns from $2.52 to around $10 and bought a 39.5% stake through a new issue of stock supported by the Bear Stearns board without the need for a shareholders vote – a slightly symbolic event suggesting maybe the bottom of the credit market trouble has been hit.

The stock hit a high of $171 last year. Existing Home sales has their first rise in seven months – up 2.9% against forecasts of a fall of 0.8%.
Some fuss about the 20% fall in the HBOS share price in the UK on Thursday (followed by its quick recovery). There was talk that the Financial Times was going to run a story saying they have 128bn pounds of customer liabilities that needed rolling in credit markets and that they needed to be bailed out by the Bank of England. The FSA are conducting a criminal investigation into who started the rumours.

Both BHP and RIO up in ADR form overnight, 1.48% and 2% respectively. BHP up 93c to 3480c and RIO up 270c to 11890. Metals down overnight – Zinc down 6.2%, Aluminium down 2.7% and Nickel 2.8%. Copper down 1.8%. Zinifex up 32c to 957c.

Oil price down 87c to $101.70 - China's crude oil imports increased by more than 18% last month compared to a year ago to 3.6m barrels a day. Woodside down 4c to 5122c.

Gold down $1.30. Newcrest down 82c to 3048c. Bonds down with the 10 year yield up to 3.53% from 3.34%.