The Australian sharemarket is expected to open flat this morning after Wall Street closed relatively steady on Friday.
The local share market closed stronger on Friday higher thanks to some upbeat outlooks from Australian companies. The S&P/ASX 200 Index is up 39 points to 4,490 and on the futures market the SPI200’s up 2 points.
Checking currencies at 8:25 AM the Aussie Dollar is buying 84.17 US cents, 78.56 Yen, 58.88 Euro cents and 51.79 Pence Stirling.
On the economic front today, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s financial aggregates data is out for July, the Australian Bureau of Statistics business indicators data for the June quarter, TDS-Melbourne Institute inflation gauge and HIA new home sales figures for July.
Also being release this week, the RBA will reveal its decision on the official cash rate for September tomorrow. On Wednesday the Bureau of Statistics issues the national accounts for the June quarter.
And in companies reporting today, ANZ Banking Group is due to issue its second half market update and PaperlinX and Elders will post their annual results.
In company about this morning: ANZ (ASX:ANZ) shares have been placed in a trading halt and they last traded at $20.46. The banking group is expected to reveal today that its second-half impairment charges for sour loans might not be as high as originally forecast. As mentioned earlier, ANZ is due to update investors this morning about its trading performance over its most recent quarter. Commentators are tipping the results will show the rate of growth in its impaired loans has tailed off significantly when compared with its first half between September 2008 and March this year. Looking at the past five years of results, 2007 was the best result over that period.
Wesfarmers (ASX:WES) shares closed stronger on Friday, up 2.33% to $25.50. Wesfarmers has decided to undertake a formal review of its $1 billion portfolio of hotels in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia. Wesfarmers managing director Richard Goyder and new finance director Terry Bowen are believed to have been unhappy with some of the investment returns from the 95 hotels and are conducting a full strategic review of ownership options. Wesfarmers' net profits have been strong over the past two years with the best result in 2009.
Checking ex-dividends, and among those going today are BHP Billiton with a 50.07 cent fully franked dividend, Global Construction Services 3.5 cent fully franked and RP Data 1.5 cent fully franked.
To the international scoreboard: Wall Street finished mixed on Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 36 points. The S&P500 Index lost 2 and the NASDAQ rose 1 point.
European markets were stronger: London’s FTSE rose 40 points, Paris up 45 points and Frankfurt added 47 points.
Asian markets were mixed: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 144 points. Tokyo’s Nikkei rose 60 points and China’s SSE Composite fell 86 points.
Looking at Metals: Gold increased $11.50 to US$958.80 an ounce for the December contract on Comex. Silver is up 56 cents to US$14.82 and copper is up 8 cents to US$2.95.
And finally, oil is up 25 cents to US$72.74 a barrel for October light crude in New York.
