Oil surges to 8-week high; Aus shares to open higher

Market Reports

by David Chau

Most stock markets around the world finished higher overnight, so Australia will be taking positive leads this morning.

Crude oil prices are doing particular well – surging for the sixth straight day and hitting an 8-week high. Naturally, this boosted the performance of Energy shares, which were the star performers on Wall Street. It seems OPEC members and other key oil exporters will resume talks about freezing output when they meet next month in Algeria.

Earlier in the week, the US Federal Reserve members were split on whether to raise interest rates soon. They will be assessing the upcoming economic data to see how strongly the US economy is recovering first.

US economic news

The number of Americans filing for unemployment was lower than expected last week. Weekly jobless claims fell by 4,000 to 262,000. Data like this could edge the Fed towards a rate rise next month.

Markets

Wall Street finished stronger on Thursday: The Dow Jones gained 0.1% to close at 18,598, the S&P 500 rose by 0.2% to close at 2,187 and the NASDAQ was up 0.2% to close at 5,240.

European markets closed higher: London’s FTSE was up 0.1, Paris gained 0.4% and Frankfurt gained 0.6%.

Asian markets were mixed: Tokyo’s Nikkei lost 1.6%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up almost 1%, and the Shanghai Composite closed 0.2% lower.

As for the Australian share market, it finished weaker yesterday: The ASX 200 closed 27 points down to finish at 5,508. And this morning, on the futures market, the SPI is up 15 points.

Currencies

The Australian Dollar at 7:20AM was buying $US76.87 cents, 58.41 Pence, 76.87 Yen and 67.73 Euro cents.

Earnings season

A number of companies including IAG, Santos and Woodside Petroleum will release their FY16 results today.  We will provide you with updates on these results as soon as we hear them.

Company news

Mineral Resources Ltd (ASX:MIN) has reported an underlying net profit of $110 million for FY16, which it says in line with the FY before that. The company also reported $286 million in normalised EBITDA, at the top end of its guidance. And it declared a fully franked final dividend of 21 cents per share.

Shares in Mineral Resources last traded 5.46% higher at $10.62.

Aurizon Holdings Ltd (ASX:AZJ) has secured a new 5-year contract with K&S Freighters, worth around $20-$25 million per year. As part of this deal, Aurizon will transport around cargo containers – in the order of 20,000 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TFEU) across Australia.

Shares in Aurizon closed 0.4% down at $4.58.

Ex-dividends

Three companies are going ex-dividend today -- Ansell, CSG and Fairfax.

Commodities

Gold has gained over $8 to $US1,357 an ounce for the December contract on Comex.
Silver is up $0.09 to $19.74 for September.
Copper is up just $0.01 to $2.18 a pound for September.
Oil has gained $1.37 to $US48.89 a barrel for September light crude. 

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