Despite a late rally in US stocks which managed to break a four day losing streak on Friday, the Australian share market looks set to open lower. Sinking iron ore prices are expected to weigh heavily on the local bourse while major US indexes had a revival on talks that chipmaker Intel might be in talks to merge with Altera.
Meanwhile US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen continues to balance a fine line between admitting inflation and wages are not where they should be but signaling the time to start raising interest rates is near.
US economic news
Commerce Department showed that GDP expanded at 2.2 per cent for the final quarter of 2014, a little below expectations. Consumer spending managed to limit the slowdown as business cut back on inventory and investment. Company profit after tax fell for the first time a few years, down 1.6 per cent after rising of 4.7 per cent in the third quarter.
Markets
Wall Street closed higher yesterday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.2 per cent to close at 17,713, the S&P 500 added 0.2 per cent to close at 2,061 and the NASDAQ lifted 0.6 per cent to close at 4,891.
European markets closed mixed: London’s FTSE shed 0.6 per cent, Paris advanced 0.6 per cent and Frankfurt improved 0.2 per cent.
Asian markets closed mixed: Tokyo’s Nikkei shed nearly one per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.4 per cent, and China’s Shanghai Composite rose 0.2 per cent.
The Australian share market closed higher on Friday, up 41 points to 5920, on the week the market lost 56 points. On the futures market the SPI is 34 points down.
Currencies
The Australian Dollar at 7:30AM was buying 77.5 US cents, 52.05 Pence Sterling, 92.42 Yen and 71.16 Euro cents.
Company news
Beach Energy Limited
(ASX:BPT) says they have been advised by Chevron Exploration Australia that the US firm would be withdrawing from the Nappamerri shale gas project in South Australia. Chevron is reducing its exploration exposure due to market conditions and has reassessed a number of local projects. Chevron’s equity interests in the project will now revert to Beach Energy and Beach will seek another partner to develop the large gas resource that has been identified at the Cooper Basin resource. Shares in Beach Energy closed flat at $1.08 on Friday.
Meanwhile Icon Energy Limited
(ASX:ICN) have also been informed that Chevron would not be participating in Stage 2 of ATP 855 wells located in Queensland. These wells are part of the same Nappamerri trough in the Cooper Basin and again, the joint venture will now revert to 35.1 per cent to Icon Energy and 64.9 per cent to Beach Energy. Shares in Icon Energy also closed flat at $0.09.
Ex-dividends Five companies are trading ex-dividend today including Cedar Woods Properties Limited
(ASX:CWP), Freedom Food Ltd,
(ASX:FNP), Homeloans Limited,
(ASX:HOM), McMillan Shakespeare,
(ASX:MMS) and Prime Financial
(ASX:PFG).
Commodities
Gold has slipped $5.00 to US$1200 an ounce for the April contract on Comex. Silver has dropped 7 cents to $17.07 for May. Copper has lost 5 cents to $2.77 a pound. Oil has fell $2.56 to US$48.87 a barrel for May light crude in New York.
