The Australian share market is set to open higher with a strong lead coming from Wall Street, which managed to finish near session highs on Wednesday after trading in a narrow range for most of the day.
US stocks were supported by the release of some positive economic news which helped to ease concern that the economy might slip back into recession.
A report from payroll processor ADP showed private sector employment grew for a sixth month in a row. Private sector employers added 42,000 jobs in July, following an increase of 19,000 jobs in June.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Supply Management's services sector index rose slightly in July, marking its seventh consecutive month of growth. The ISM services index increased to 54.3 last month from 53.8 in June. Any reading above 50 indicates growth.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 44 points stronger at 10,680. The S&P 500 Index is up 7 points at 1,127 and the NASDAQ rose 20 points at 2,304.
European stocks finished mixed; London’s FTSE is down 10, Paris is up 13 points and Frankfurt added 23 points.
Asian markets were mixed: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng up 92 points on Tuesday, Tokyo’s Nikkei plunged 205 points and China’s Shanghai Composite is up 12 points.
The Australian share market finished lower on Wednesday. The S&P/ASX 200 Index fell 30 points to close at 4,542 and on the futures market the SPI200 is up 28 points. The Aussie Dollar at 7:25AM was buying 91.75 US cents, 57.76 Pence Sterling, 79.15 Yen and 69.73 Euro cents.
In business news: Shares in News Corporation (ASX:NWS), closed down 0.95% to $16.75 on Wednesday. Blockbuster hit movie, Avatar, has helped the global media giant achieve a net profit of $2.74 billion for the 2009/10 period. It’s a return to the black for the owner of News Limited newspapers in Australia, from the $3.72 billion loss in the year before, which included a hefty pre-tax impairment charge. News Corp chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch says he’s “very pleased with the overall 30 per cent increase” which is more than three times the growth the company was projecting at the start of the fiscal year. News Corporation owns the news agency Dow Jones and MySpace as well as 20th Century Fox movie studios, Sky Italia and the Australian newspaper is among the newspapers in owns here. News Corporation posted around a $4.16 billion loss in the year ending 30 June 2009.
Shares in Rio Tinto Ltd (ASX:RIO) finished down 0.22% to $72.84 on Wednesday. The global miner has been tipped to announce a big turnaround in its first half performance when it unveils its results later today. Rio Tinto is expected to release earnings figures for the six months to June 2010 far above the equivalent period in 2009, during the depths of the global financial crisis. BT Financial Group portfolio manager Tim Barker says Rio's underlying earnings for the period could come in at $5.5 billion to $6 billion. Rio Tinto reported a profit of $5.4 billion for the year ending 30 December 2009, slightly higher than the result the year before but still significantly less that the $8 billion-plus result in 2007.
To ex-dividends: Singapore Telecommunications is going today with a 6.23 cent unfranked dividend. And on Friday, Finbar Group with a 5.5 cent fully franked dividend and Transmetro Corporation, paying a 3 cent fully franked dividend.
To commodities, and the price of gold added $8.50 to US$1,193 an ounce for the August contract on Comex. Silver dropped 14 cents to US$18.26 and copper is up 5 cents at $3.40 a pound.
And finally the price of oil is down 8 cents to US$82.47 a barrel for September light crude in New York.
