Locals traders and investors are absorbing a mixed bag of news from markets. We saw mostly higher leads from Wall Street with the Dow and the S&P 500 gaining ground, leaving the tech heavy Nasdaq to ink its third day of losses, with the most selling in Apple.
Zooming out though, tech stocks have been the best performer this year, gaining more than 20 per cent.
As for financials, they are not quite catching up and have added 5 per cent over the last three months.
On the commodity front, Oil have dived 2.4 per cent, overnight almost erasing Fridays gains which left our energy sector to close higher yesterday.
Copper and gold and platinum have also gained.
Taking all of that into equation, the SPI futures are pointing to a modest single digit rise for the ASX200 at the open.
MarketsWall Street closed mixed yesterday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.13 per cent to close at 21,704, the S&P 500 added 0.12 per cent to close at 2,428 and the NASDAQ lost 0.05 per cent to close at 6,213
European markets closed lower: London’s FTSE fell 0.07 per cent, Paris lost 0.5 per cent and Frankfurt shed 0.8 per cent.
Asian markets closed mixed: Tokyo’s Nikkei lost 0.4 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.4 per cent, and China’s Shanghai Composite gained 0.6 per cent.
And back home, the Australian share market closed lower yesterday: The S&P/ASX 200 Index closed 21 points down or 0.37 per cent lower to finish at 5,726.
On the futures market the SPI is 4 points up.
Company newsDowner EDI
(ASX:DOW) which owns 87.4 per cent of Spotless Group
(ASX:SPO) has again extended its takeover offer via its ninth bidder’s statements. The engineering and infrastructure company extended its takeover offer period to Monday 28 August 2017 at 7pm unless again extended. Its takeover offer Spotless Group shares remains at $1.15 cash per share. Share in Downer EDI
(ASX:DOW) are trading 0.59 per cent lower yesterday to $6.77.
Reporting seasonWe can watch out for about 12 companies reporting financial results today, just a name a few we can watch out for Amcor
(ASX:AMC), BHP Billiton
(ASX:BHP), Oil Search
(ASX:OSH) and Sydney Airport
(ASX:SYD).
Ex-dividends8 companies are going ex-dividend today:
Bell Financial Group
(ASX:BFG) is paying 2 cents fully franked,
Computershare
(ASX:CPU) is paying 19 cents unfranked,
IPH
(ASX:IPH) is paying 10.5 cents fully franked,
Iselect
(ASX:ISU) is paying 4 cents fully franked,
Platinum Asia
(ASX:PAI) is paying 1 cents fully franked
Platinum Capital
(ASX:PMC) is paying 6 cents fully franked,
REA Group
(ASX:REA) is 51 cents fully franked
Wesfarmers Limited
(ASX:WES) is paying $1.20 fully franked
CurrenciesOne Australian Dollar at 7:20am was buying 79.40 US cents, 61.56 Pence Sterling, 86.54 Yen and 67.20 Euro cents.
CommoditiesGold has gained $5.80 to $US1,297 an ounce
Silver is steady at $US17.00 an ounce
Oil has shed $1.09 to $US47.57 a barrel
