The Australian share market may open slightly higher this morning despite further falls on global markets following attempts to address the financial turmoil in Europe.
The latest worries come from Germany, where naked short selling has been banned by regulators. Another wave of selling hit Wall Street in response to growing fears about Europe’s debt crisis.
In economic news out of the US overnight, the Labor Department said its consumer price index fell 0.1% in April on the month before, but it increased 2.2% compared to the year before. Still, that's the smallest annual increase since January 1966. The report showed that core CPI, which excludes volatile food and fuel prices, held steady with March's figures and rose 0.9% on an annual basis.
And a report from the Mortgage Banker Association showed that a record 10% of home borrowers were behind in their payments during the first quarter of 2010.
US Stocks managed to recover from deep losses posted earlier in the session but still ended lower. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 67 points weaker at 10,444. The S&P500 Index dropped 6 to 1,115 and the NASDAQ is down 19 points at 2,298.
European stocks fell. London’s FTSE is down 149 points, Paris lost 106 points and Frankfurt fell 167 points.
Asian markets were weaker. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng plunged 366 points, Tokyo’s Nikkei fell 56 and China’s Shanghai Composite is down 7 points.
The Australian share market closed lower yesterday. The S&P/ASX 200 Index lost 84 points at 4,387 and on the futures market the SPI200 is up 7 points. On to currencies: the Aussie Dollar at 8:35AM was buying 84.94 US cents, 58.88 Pence Sterling, 77.86 Yen and 68.46 Euro cents.
In local economic news: the ABS average weekly earnings data is out for February.
The Melbourne Institute publishes its survey of consumer inflationary expectations for May and, it also releases, with Westpac, its survey of consumer unemployment expectations for May.
To company news around this morning: Shares in Woodside Petroleum (ASX:WPL) closed 1.9% lower yesterday to $42.25. East Timor's petroleum regulator is demanding that two Woodside Petroleum executives apologise for disrespectful behaviour at a meeting on the Timor Sea's Greater Sunrise gas field. The Herald newspaper reports that the president of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) Gualdino da Silva said the Sunrise LNG Development senior vice president Jon Ozturgut and Woodside's East Timor manager Brendan Augustin walked out of a meeting yesterday, after being told that the company's LNG development plan was incomplete and wouldn't be accepted. However a Woodside spokesman has described the meeting as "cordial" and said there was no walkout. The NPA president says he explained to the two Woodside executives that the plan to develop a floating platform couldn't be accepted, when under the Greater Sunrise joint venture agreement, all three possible development proposals, including piping gas to either a processing plant in East Timor or Darwin need to be considered. Woodside Petroleum’s year to December 2009 net profit was $1.8 billion.
Shares in Clive Peeters (ASX:CPR) last traded at 15 cents. In the latest development on the white goods and electronics retailer, Clive Peeters is widely expected to close some stores and shed hundreds of jobs as it struggles to keep trading in some form. The company’s board called in McGrathNicol as administrator yesterday after National Australia Bank rejected its plea to write off $10 million in debt. NAB, which is believed to be owed about $35 million by Clive Peeters, met administrators yesterday and according to the Herald was preparing to appoint receivers and managers to protect its own position. McGrathNicol administrators are drawing up a survival plan for Peeters to present to creditors on May 28. The Herald says the plan is likely to involve Peeters closing or selling loss-making stores, enabling it to quit its most expensive property leases. Its last annual report suggested rent costs were about $23 million a year. Clive Peeters posted nearly a $9 million loss in the financial year to June 30, 2009.
To commodities, and the price of gold fell $21.70 to US$1,192.60 an ounce for the May contract on Comex. Silver is down 76 cents at US$18.09 and copper fell 7 cents to US$2.95.
And the price of oil managed to bounce back late in the overnight session, despite energy prices falling on global demand concerns. The price added 46 cents to US$69.87 a barrel for June light crude in New York.
