The Australian share market is likely to open higher this morning following a mostly positive lead from Wall St overnight, however weaker commodity prices may limit gains.
Focus will be in NAB after the ACCC last night said it would oppose its takeover bid for AXA but clear a similar bid by AMP.
Looking to the US, and a late rise on Wall St helped to keep the Dow and S&P500 up while the Nasdaq was flat, investors reassessed fraud charges laid against Goldman Sachs, and were encouraged by a strong profit from Citigroup.
Citigroup posted a quarterly profit of $4.4 billion beating Wall St estimates.
In economic news out of the US, according to the Conference Board the index of leading economic indicators rose 1.4% in March after rising 0.4% in February. Economists expected a rise of 1.1%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 73 points higher at 11,092. The S&P500 Index is up 5 points at 1,198 and the NASDAQ closed flat 2,480.
European stock markets closed weaker. London’s FTSE lost 16 points, Paris also dropped 16 points and Frankfurt declined 18 points.
Asian stocks were also lower on Monday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 460 points, Tokyo’s Nikkei is down 193 points and China’s Shanghai Composite dropped 150 points.
Australian stocks closed deeply in the red yesterday. The S&P/ASX 200 Index finished 70 points weaker at 4,915, and on the futures market the SPI200 is up 33 points. On to currencies: the Aussie Dollar at 8:40AM was buying 92.44 US cents, 60.31 Pence Sterling, 85.48 Yen and 68.57 Euro cents.
In local economic news: The minutes of the RBA’s April 6 monetary policy meeting is due out today.
To company news around this morning: Shares in the Seven Network Ltd (ASX:SEV) declined 0.51% to $7.74 yesterday. Shareholders of the Seven Network are to meet today to vote on Kerry Stokes’ proposed merger of the television broadcaster with earth moving equipment group WesTrac. While analysts are predicting the merger will get the green light from Seven’s shareholders today, some still believe the merger not compelling saying Seven would be better left as a pure media asset. Key Seven shareholders, fund manager Ausbil Dexia and investment manager Perennial Value, have both confirmed their support of the deal. Support from these two shareholders, who combined hold around a 28% interest in Seven, is conditional on Mr Stokes selling $130 million worth of shares in the merged entity if WesTrac does not achieve its fiscal 2011 earnings forecasts of $231 million. The Seven Network posted a profit for the 2009 financial year.
Global miner Rio Tinto Ltd (ASX:RIO) shares dropped 2.15% to $77.96 on Monday. Merrill Lynch has slashed its profit forecast for the miner after the company’s production report failed to impress. According to The Australian Financial Review analysts at Merrill Lynch downgraded their expectation of the company’s earnings per share by 2.4%. UBS also cut their price target to $111 a share, down from $113 a share. Both Merrill Lynch and UBS have kept a buy rating on Rio’s shares. Rio Tinto reported profit of $5.4 billion for the 2009 calendar year.
There is just one company going ex-dividend today: Ludowici is going ex-dividend with a 6 cent unfranked dividend. Coming up tomorrow is STW Communications and on Friday is Brickworks, OM Holdings and Prime Infrastructure Group.
To commodities: The price of gold is down $1.10 to US$1,135.20 an ounce for the May contract on Comex. Silver gained 5 cents to US$17.72 and copper is down a cent at US$3.49.
And the price of oil fell $1.79 to US$81.45 a barrel for May light crude in New York.
