The local share market is likely to open lower this morning following falls on Wall St overnight after disappointing new home sales data caused concern for the health of the economic recovery.
On Wednesday the local market closed lower with the S&P/ASX 200 Index down 68 points at 4,685. Looking at the futures market the SPI200’s down 80 points.
Checking currencies at 8:55 AM the Aussie Dollar is buying 89.82 US cents, 81.45 Yen, 61.04 Euro cents and 54.81 Pence Sterling.
In economic news out today: The ABS releases its 2008/2009 annual report, and the Housing Industry Association and RP Data Residential Land Report for the June quarter is also due out.
To what’s making company news this morning: Shares in Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ASX:ANZ) fell 1.68 per cent to $23.35 yesterday. The bank has this morning posted an 11 per cent fall in net profit to $2.943 billion for the full year. However cash profit, its preferred measure of profitability rose 12 per cent to $3.4 billion from $3 billion. CEO Mike Smith says the economic slowdown is playing out much as the company expected, saying that in this phase bad debts have emerged from highly leveraged entities and more recently from the commercial sector and high risk personal customers, which the bank expects will continue into 2010. However Mr Smith says given the resilience of the Australian economy, stabilisation that is starting to happen in New Zealand and the strength of Asian economies, particularly China, ANZ believes credit quality has now stabilised. ANZ’s profit highlight over the past five years was in 2007 recording $4.18 billion.
Shares in casino owner Crown Ltd (ASX:CWN) dropped 4.28 per cent to $8.28 yesterday. Chairman James Packer has apologised to shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting saying that the company’s investments in North America were ill-timed. Mr Packer says it is not a time to be flippant about the performance of Crown’s North American investments, saying that clearly the performance of those investments has been extremely disappointing and it would be fair to say that many shareholders are disappointed. However he says there is the prospect of gaining some value back from the company’s North American assets. Reassuring investors Mr Packer said that Crown is weathering the global financial storm and is well placed for the future with a strong balance sheet, two high-performing Australian casinos and an exciting investment in Macau. Crown’s 2008 net profit was $3.56 billion.
To the ex-dividend scoreboard: Going ex-dividend today we have Clover Corporation with a 1 cent fully franked dividend, FFI Holdings with an 11 cent fully franked dividend and PearlStreet with a 1 cent fully franked dividend.
To international markets: Wall Street closed lower on Wednesday: The Dow Jones industrial average fell 119 points. The S&P500 Index dropped 21 points and the NASDAQ dropped 56 points.
European markets were also lower. London’s FTSE fell 121 points, Paris is down 80 points and Frankfurt lost 139 points.
Asian markets were mixed: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 408. Tokyo’s Nikkei dropped 137 and China’s SSE Composite gained 10.
Looking at metals: Gold is down $4.90 to US$1030.50 an ounce for the December contract on Comex. Silver slipped 30 cents to US$16.24 and copper is down 7 cents to US$2.93.
And the price of oil slipped $2.09 to US$77.46 a barrel for December light crude in New York.
