Wall Street choppy: Aus shares to open lower

Market Reports

by Anna Napoli

Australian shares look set to open lower following a mixed session on Wall Street overnight. Financials led the Dow Jones higher, with Bank of America shares jumping over 4 per cent after the company reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue. However, the major stock indexes struggled for gains throughout the session. The S&P 500 edged lower as shares of energy companies dropped alongside a decline in oil prices. US listed shares of BHP and Rio were both lower. Meantime, Netflix shares slid 9 per cent after the company reported a million subscribers less than forecast.

US crude fell over 4 per cent, after US Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin said some oil buyers could get waivers to continue buying Iranian supplies despite American sanctions on the country. Concerns about the US policy to remove Iranian barrels from the market have raised oil prices in recent weeks.

In local economic news the Reserve Bank will release the minutes of its July policy meeting today.

Markets

Wall Street closed mixed yesterday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.2 per cent to close at 25,064, the S&P 500 closed 0.1 per cent lower to close at 2,798 and the NASDAQ fell 0.3 per cent to close at 7806.

European markets closed mixed yesterday: London’s FTSE dropped 0.8 per cent, Paris was down 0.4 per cent and Frankfurt rose 0.2 per cent.

Asian markets closed mixed, Tokyo’s Nikkei was closed, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.1% and China’s Shanghai Composite was down 0.6%.

On the futures markets, the SPI futures are pointing to a 13pts loss. Yesterday, the Australian share market closed lower with the S&P/ASX 200 Index falling 27 points to close at 6242.

Company news

Engineering company, CIMIC group (ASX:CIM) announced on Monday that its construction arm, CPB Contractors has been named as the Victorian Government’s preferred party to deliver a $1 billion dollar package of works in support of the $11 billion Metro Tunnel Project. CPB and peer John Holland are equal construction partners in the Rail Infrastructure Alliance, with U.S. counterpart AECOM as the design partner
CIMIC said Revenue to CPB from the design and construction deal will be confirmed when the contract closes in the coming months. Shares in Cimic Group (ASX:CIM) closed -0.61% per cent lower to $42.44 yesterday.

Currencies

One Australian Dollar at 7:40AM was buying US74.22 cents, 56.06 Pence Sterling, 83.32 Yen and 63.38 Euro cents.

Commodities

Iron ore futures are pointing to 0.2% loss.
Gold has lost 20c to $US1241 an ounce.
Silver was flat at $US15.81 an ounce.
Oil was down $2.85 to $US67.10 a barrel.

Cryptocurrencies

The three most traded cryptocurrencies are trading higher: Bitcoin has added 4.4 per cent to US$6,668, Ethereum has gained 5.3 per cent to US$476 and EOS has jumped 7.86 per cent to US$8.04.



 

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