Marketmind: Markets find feet after Apple topples

investing.com:

A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan

Some soothing words from Federal Reserve officials calmed a jumpy first week of September for world markets, aggravated by geopolitical tech wars that saw Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) caught in the crosshairs.

The world's most valuable company, whose stock is up more than 36% so this year, has recoiled more than 6% since Wednesday on reports China had ordered central government employees to stop using iPhones at work.

Although the extent of the ban is still unclear, it wiped some $190 billion from Apple's market capitalization and dragged down major Wall St stock indices again on Thursday.

Coming just as China's main rival telecom firm Huawei launched two new smartphones, and as most G20 leaders gathered in India for another fractious global summit, the Apple sideswipe also unnerved shares in major suppliers across Asia.

The stock appeared to stabilize in out-of-hours trade on Friday and Morgan Stanley analysts claimed China's iPhone bans would at most hit Apple revenues by about 4%.

But there was also a slightly calmer market tone more generally to end the downbeat week.

Even though the latest update on U.S. employment continued to show a super-tight labor market, noises from top Fed policymakers suggested the central bank's tightening campaign may indeed be over after all.

«We've got policy in a good place,» said New York Fed President John Williams, adding it was still an «open question» whether monetary policy is restrictive enough to bring the economy back into balance.

The typically more dovish Chicago Fed boss Austan Goolsbee went one further. «We are very rapidly approaching the time when our argument is not going to be about how high should the rates