Wall Street edges higher: Aus shares to rise

Market Reports

by Anna Napoli

Australian shares are set to rise following gains on Wall Street. The US share market edged higher on Monday with shares in United Health, Home Depot and Boeing among the best performers on the Dow. The S&P 500 was lifted by gains in the telecommunications and consumer staples sectors.

In political news, after months of anticipation President Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un will meet this morning in Singapore . The North Korean leader has visited tourist sites on Singapore's waterfront hours before the historic summit. The leaders are expected to talk one-on-one, with translators only, before heading into a larger meeting.

To commodities, global oil prices were mixed on Monday West Texas Crude rose by half a per cent but brent was fairly flat, iron ore futures are pointing to a slight gain.

Local Economic news

Another busy week on the Aus eco front, today the National Australia Bank business survey is released . Analysts say there are good reasons to expect that business conditions and confidence remained robust in May. Also today data on home loans and broader lending finance are issued with credit and debit card lending.  Demand for loans, especially from investors, has weakened in line with softening home prices and tighter bank lending standards.On Wednesday the Reserve Bank Governor delivers a speech on productivity and wages. Investors will be looking for any new views on the economy that could influence the timing of the next interest rate change. Also on Wednesday, the monthly Westpac and Melbourne Institute consumer confidence reading is released. Finally on Thursday the ABS issues the May employment report.

Markets

Wall Street closed slightly higher yesterday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.02 per cent to close at 25,322, the S&P 500 gained 0.1 per cent to close at 2,782 and the NASDAQ rose 0.2 per cent to close at 7660.

European markets closed higher yesterday: London’s FTSE gained 0.7 per cent, Paris added 0.4 per cent and Frankfurt was up 0.6 per cent.

Asian markets closed mixed yesterday: Tokyo’s Nikkei gained 0.5 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.3 per cent, and China’s Shanghai Composite lost 0.5 per cent.

On the futures markets, the ASX futures are pointing to a 25 pts gain. On Friday, the Australian share market closed lower with the S&P/ASX 200 Index losing 12 points to close at 6045.

Company news

Crown Resorts (ASX:CWN) has provided a market update on the proposed buy-back of the outstanding subordinated notes. The entertainment group says so far over 1.3 million notes have been bought back with over 3.9 million notes on issue which have not been bought back by Crown. The buy- back was announced in March this year with CPH a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Press Holdings announcing plans to sell over 8 million Crown shares representing 1.2 per cent of the company’s issued share capital.  Shares in Crown Resorts (ASX:CWN) closed 0.96 per cent lower to $13.36 on Friday.

Currencies

One Australian Dollar at 7:40AM was buying US76.12 cents, 56.90 Pence Sterling, 83.75 Yen and 64.61 Euro cents.

Commodities

Iron ore futures are pointing to a 0.3 per cent gain.
Gold has added $1.70 to $US1304.40 an ounce.
Silver has added 21c to $US16.95 an ounce.
Oil was up 33c to $US66.07 a barrel.

Cryptocurrencies

The three most traded cryptocurrencies are trading lower: Bitcoin has fallen 0.01 per cent to US$6,789, Ethereum has lost 0.9 per cent to US$522 and EOS has dropped 2 per cent to US$11.20.







 

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter?

Would you like to receive our daily news to your inbox?