The Australian share market is expected to open lower this morning after Wall Street stocks finished off their session lows, as investors weighed cautious comments from a regional Federal Reserve president about the health of the US economy and a mix of quarterly profit reports.
In US economic news: the latest jobs report showed that first-time unemployment benefits fell by 11,000 to 457,000 last week. That was a better result than economists had been expecting.
But continuing claims, a measure of Americans receiving benefits for a week or more, rose more than expected to 4,565,000 from 4,484,000 in the previous week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 31 points at 10,467. The S&P 500 Index fell 5 points to 1,102 and the NASDAQ dropped 13 points at 2,252.
European stocks fell: London’s FTSE slipped 6 points, Paris lost 18 points and Frankfurt dropped 44 points.
To Asian markets were mixed: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is up 3 points, Tokyo’s Nikkei is down 57 points and China’s Shanghai Composite rose 14 points.
The Australian share market closed lowered on Thursday, and failed to achieve a fifth day of gains as US economic news weighed on the local market. The S&P/ASX 200 Index fell 6 points to 4,524 and on the futures market the SPI200 is down 17 points. The Aussie Dollar at 7:40AM was buying 90.05 US cents, 57.68 Pence Sterling, 78.27 Yen and 68.87 Euro cents.
In local economic news: the Reserve Bank of Australia releases the financial aggregates data for June.
In business news: Shares Mitchell Communications (ASX:MCU) closed steady at $1.04 on Thursday. One of the giants of Australia's advertising industry, Harold Mitchell, has signed a $363 million cash and share deal to sell Mitchell Communications Group to Britain's Aegis Group. Mr Mitchell founded the group 34 years ago and will continue to lead the expanded company. The combined entity – to encompass media buying, research and digital marketing – will have an estimated quarter share of the Australian media-buying market and will also build on Mr Mitchell's ambitions to take on Asia. Mitchell Communications (ASX:MCU) posted a $19 million net profit in 2009, which was around a $1 million increase on 2008.
Shares in Qantas Airways Ltd (ASX:QAN) closed 0.4% higher on Thursday at $2.49. Qantas has taken a swipe at a number of council-run regional airports over what it says are unreasonably high charges in mining centres. Qantas says its ability to service some remote areas of Western Australia and Queensland was being hampered by some local councils using the airport as a "cash cow". Qantas’ David Epstein says some councils are imposing charges on par with capital city levels, but their not providing a similar level of service to passengers or airlines. Mr Epstein says that as labour shortages re-emerge, councils in WA resource-rich areas need to recognise that hitting airlines poses a real economic threat to the viability of mine operations. In March this year, Qantas's low-cost offshoot Jetstar pulled out of Rockhampton in Queensland because it was unable to secure a competitive airport pricing agreement. Qantas Airways posted a $117 million net profit in 2009, which was significantly less than the $969 million result in 2008.
Turning to ex-dividends: Alcoa is going today with a 2.91 cent unfranked dividend and Centennial Coal with a 4 cent 40% franked dividend and on Monday Ramelius Resources is going ex-dividend.
And the price of oil gained $1.37 to US$78.36 a barrel for August light crude in New York.