Australian stocks look set to rise this morning on good leads from overnight trading, with Wall Street indices and precious metals rising, although oil fell.
US stocks were led higher by the technology sector after upbeat brokerage comments on Oracle and ahead of an expected profit report from Intel.
In economic news out of the US, an unexpected drop in December retail sales and a rise in jobless claims last week cast fresh doubts on whether the US economic recovery will continue as government stimulus fades.
Retail sales fell 0.3% in December after rising 1.8% in November.
New claims for unemployment were up last week to 444,000 from 433,000 in the previous week.
And business inventories rose 0.4% in November after rising 0.4% in October.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 30 points to 10,711. The S&P500 Index rose 3 to 1,148 and the NASDAQ added 9 points at 2,317.
European markets were higher. London’s FTSE is up 25 points and Paris rose 15, and Frankfurt is up 26 points.
Asian markets were mixed: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 32 points, Tokyo’s Nikkei added 173 points and China’s Shanghai Composite advanced 43 points.
The Australian share market ended higher yesterday after employment figures beat expectations, putting pressure on the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates for a fourth month in a row.
The S&P/ASX 200 Index finished 30 points higher at 4,898 and on the futures market the SPI200’s up 17.
Looking at currencies; the Aussie Dollar at 8:40AM is buying 93.2 US cents, 85.04 Yen, 64.27 Euro cents and 57.05 Pence Sterling.
In company news about this morning: Telstra (ASX:TLS) shares closed steady yesterday, up 0.3% to $3.35. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the major telcos were forced to pay more than $1 million in compensation to customers for slow service last financial year. While Optus and AAPT improved their connection service performance on previous years, Telstra on the other hand appears to have gone backwards. Figures contained in an annual report card from the Australian Communications and Media Authority, show Telstra's reliability in meeting the connections target dropped to 90.3% for 2008-09 - down from 92.8% a year earlier. Telstra’s 2009 net profit came in at just over $4 billion.
NRW Holdings Ltd (ASX:NWH) shares last traded at $2.05. The civil and mining services contractor has been awarded a variation to an existing contract with BHP Billiton. The contract is for the southern section of a duplicated rail line at the mining giant's iron ore expansion project in Western Australia's Pilbara region, known as RPG5. NRW says the variation is valued at about $145 million, with NRW's additional component worth approximately $105 million. NRW’s 2009 net profit was $37 million.
To the week ahead in companies going ex dividend: Mirrabooka Investments is going on Thursday and Contango Microcap is going on Friday.
To metals: Gold advanced $7.20 to US$1,144 an ounce for the February contract on Comex. For the March contract Silver added 9 cents to US$18.64 and copper is steady at US$3.40.
And the price of oil is down 26 cents at US$79.39 a barrel for February light crude in New York.
