The Australian market has received mixed leads from overseas markets, with Wall Street higher, along with gold, but other commodities lower.
The local share market closed stronger on Friday with the S&P/ASX 200 Index is up 86 points at 4,594. Looking at the futures market the SPI200’s up 4 points.
Checking currencies at 8:45 AM the Aussie Dollar is buying 92.37 US cents, 83.15 Yen, 62.06 Euro cents and 55.44 Pence Sterling. In economic news:The Australian Bureau of Statistics is due to publish housing finance data for September.
Also due for release is the ANZ job advertisements survey for October.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia is also due to publish its September quarter trading update.
In company news:AMP (ASX:AMP) have been placed in a trading halt this morning but they last traded at $5.87. AXA Asia Pacific Holdings has rejected an unsolicited and conditional scheme proposal from AMP. The part cash and part share offer implied an offer price of $5.34 per share. Under the proposal AMP would have acquired all shares including those held in AXA SA and the Asian operations of AXA Asia Pacific. But independent directors at AXA Asia Pacific have described the bid as inadequate and as not being in the best interested of minority shareholders. AMP’s 2008 net profit was $580 million.
Orica (ASX:ORI) shares finished slightly higher on Friday, up 0.99% to $22.35. Orica has released its financial year results for the period ending September 30, which show a 13.2% jump in revenue to $7.41 billion. Net profit came in at $541.8 million, excluding minority interests, which is marginally higher than the year before. Orica has also announced a final year dividend of 57 cents. Orica’s net profit highlight until now was in 2008.
Checking ex-dividends and there are a number going today including, ARB Corp with a 40 cent fully franked, PPK Group, 1 cent fully franked and Westpac with a 60 cent fully franked dividend.
Over to international markets: Wall Street higher - The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 17 points. The S&P500 Index is 3 points higher and the NASDAQ gained 7 points.
European markets were mixed. London’s FTSE rose 17 points, Paris down 1 point and Frankfurt is up 7.
Asian markets were higher: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 351. Tokyo’s Nikkei rose 72 while the Shanghai Composite added 9.
Looking at metals: Gold is $6.70 higher at US$1096 an ounce for the December contract on Comex. Silver lost 4 cents to US$17.38 and copper is steady at US$2.95.
And the price of oil is $2.19 lower at US$77.43 a barrel for December light crude in New York.
