Our local share market is expected to open significantly higher today after Wall Street rallied on better-than-expected GDP growth figures.
The Australian market finished lower yesterday with the S&P/ASX 200 Index down 110 points at 4,575. Looking at the futures market the SPI200’s up 81 points.
Checking currencies at 8:30 AM the Aussie Dollar is buying 91.6 US cents, 83.77 Yen, 61.76 Euro cents and 55.33 Pence Sterling.
Coming up in today’s economic news, the Reserve Bank of Australia releases financial aggregates data for September.
To what’s making company news this morning: ANZ (ASX:ANZ) shares closed lower yesterday, slipping 2.14% to $22.85. ANZ Banking group chief executive Mike Smith has criticised the Reserve Bank of Australia for being too quick to raise interest rates, when the economic outlook remains fragile. Mr Smith’s comments came after ANZ posted an 11% drop in annual profit yesterday. While the CEO concedes that the RBA is armed with more information, he says he was surprised that the monetary policy was being tightened before Christmas, when it might have been more prudent to wait until government stimulus was no longer needed. 2007 was the profit highlight over the five year period with over $4 billion.
BHP Billiton (ASX:BHP) shares closed lower yesterday, down 3.31% to $37.13. BHP CEO Marius Kloppers has told a gathering in London overnight that he sees signs of a “pullback” in demand from China as it finishes rebuilding its inventories of raw materials. Mr Kloppers said that restocking of commodities in China is essentially complete. Earlier this month, BHP reported a record first-quarter production of iron ore as steel companies resumed output at mills around the world. China accounted for 20% of BHP’s sales in the year ended June 30. Looking over the past five year period, BHP’s best net profit was in 2008 with over US$15 billion.
There are a number of companies going ex-dividend today and among them are Alcoa with just over a 2.8 cent unfranked divided, Harvey Norman with a 6 cent fully franked dividend and the Warehouse Group with close to a 12.82 cent unfranked dividend.
To international markets: As mentioned US markets closed stronger, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 200 points, the S&P500 Index rose 23 points and the NASDAQ closed 38 points.
European markets were higher. London’s FTSE up 57 points, Paris rose 50 points and Frankfurt added 91 points.
Asian markets finished lower: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 497. Tokyo’s Nikkei dropped 184 and Shanghai Composite lost 71.
Looking at metals: Gold is $16.60 higher to US$1047.10 an ounce for the December contract on Comex. Silver rose 42 cents to US$16.66 and copper added 10 cents to US$3.03
And the price of oil is higher, adding $2.41 to US$79.87 a barrel for December light crude in New York.
