The Australian share market is expected to open weaker today as it receives weak leads from offshore trading overnight. Investors are still concerned about instability in Korea and weakness in the Eurozone.
On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, was down 40 points to 11,052. S&P500 was down 2 points to 1,188 and NASDAQ was down 9 points to 2,525.
European stocks were lower: London’s FTSE was down 118 points, Paris was down 92 points and Frankfurt was down 151.
To Asian markets, stocks were mixed: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 289 points, Tokyo’s Nikkei was up 86 points and China’s Shanghai Composite was down 5 points.
The Australian share market finished higher on Monday. The S&P/ASX 200 Index closed 20 points higher to 4,619 and on the futures market the SPI200 was up 5 points. Turning to currencies and the Aussie Dollar at 8:30am was buying 96.36 US cents, 61.88 Pence Sterling, 81.21 Yen and 73.45 Euro cents.
Economic news: It’s a busy day in economics news which is headlined by a speech in Sydney by RBA assistant governor Guy Debelle to the Australian Securitisation Forum. In data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics is releasing figures on the balance of payments and Australia’s international investment position for the September quarter. The ABS is also releasing government spending figures for September quarter and building approvals figures for October.
Company news: On Monday shares in National Australia Bank Ltd (ASX:NAB) closed 1.29 per cent higher to $23.53. Five days later and almost 20,000 bank accounts still have uncorrected mistakes. National Australia’s Bank’s payment system was severely affected after a corrupt computer file crippled payment processing and transactions. The IT glitch left millions of people stranded without cash for days. Yesterday, NAB said it had identified and fixed the problem but was continuing update around 19,100 accounts that are affected by duplicate or multiple transactions. For the year ended 30 September 2010, NAB reported a net profit of $4.2 billion.
Yesterday shares in Qantas Airways Ltd (ASX:QAN) closed 0.37 per cent lower at $2.66. The aircraft insurance arm of Aon says the engine failure on the Qantas A380 is expected to generate an insurance claim of around $72.7 million for significant damage to the aircraft wing and engine. The company says this figure only accounts for equipment damage and not business losses incurred from the grounding of Qantas’ A380 fleet. For the year ended 30 June 2010, Qantas booked a net profit of $116 million.
Ex-dividends: There are two companies going ex-dividend today and they are HGL Ltd with a 5 cent fully franked dividend and Tower Australia with a 5.75 cent fully franked dividend.
Commodities: Gold is down $7 to $US1,366 an ounce for the December contract on Comex, silver is down $0.38 to $27.15 and copper is up $0.0025 to $3.76 a pound.
Oil is up $1.87 at $85.73 for December light crude in New York.
