Australian shares are set to rise at the open after closing yesterday on a new ten year high. On Wall Street, FANG stocks - Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google's parent company Alphabet – were driving growth. Apple rose to a fresh high – pushing past its market value of $1 trillion. Amazon could be next to tip the trillion mark as they rise to $930 billion. The S&P 500 Index did go lower in the final 15 minutes of trading - that was more than 10 percent below the 30-day average. On the commodities front, oil dropped and gold saw a drop too. Iron Ore is trading at US$69.78. and the futures for iron ore are suggesting a 0.6 per cent rise.
Local economic news The RBA due to release a tatement on Monetary Policy later today.
MarketsTo the figures from around the globe: Wall Street closed mixed on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 0.3 per cent lower to close at 25,509, the S&P 500 closed 0.14 per cent lower to close at 2,854 and the NASDAQ gained 0.04 per cent to close at 7892.
European markets closed mixed yesterday: London’s FTSE lost 0.5 per cent, Paris was up slightly, 0.01 per cent and Frankfurt closed 0.3 per cent higher.
Asian markets closed mixed, Tokyo’s Nikkei fell 0.2 per cent lower, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.9 per cent and China’s Shanghai Composite gained 1.8 per cent.
On the futures markets, the ASX futures are pointing to a 10 points gain. Yesterday, the Australian share market closed higher with the S&P/ASX 200 Index adding 29 points to close at 6298.
Company newsWindlab
(ASX:WND) has executed a binding term sheet with Flow Power for the sale of 50MWs of electricity output and associated Large Scale Generation Certificates from its proposed 104MW Lakeland Wind Farm project, for a period of up to 10 years. Lakeland Wind Farm is a fully approved wind farm located 60 km South-west of Cooktown on the Cape York Peninsula, adjacent to the town of Lakeland. Shares in Windlab Limited
(ASX:WND) closed closed 2.94 per cent lower to $1.32.
Reporting seasonFour companies are set to report today
Aventus Retail Property Fund
(ASX:AVN)Baby Bunting Group
(ASX:BBN)REA Group
(ASX:REA)And Charter Hall Long Wale REIT
(ASX:CLW)Ex-DividendsThree companies are going ex-dividend today:
BKI Investment
(ASX:BKI) is paying 3.7c fully franked
Janus Henderson
(ASX:JHG) is paying 48.45c unfranked
Oceania Healthcare
(ASX:OCA) is paying 2.03 unfranked
Currencies One Australian Dollar at 7:40AM was buying US73.78 cents, 57.53 Pence Sterling, 81.98 Yen and 64.02 Euro cents.
Commodities Iron ore futures are pointing to 0.6 per cent rise.
Gold dropped $1.00 to $US1220 an ounce.
Silver gained 3c at $US15.46 an ounce.
Oil dropped 19c to $US65.35 a barrel.
CryptocurrenciesThe three most traded cryptocurrencies are trading higher: Bitcoin has added 4 per cent to US$6612, Ethereum has gained 2.7 per cent to US$369 and EOS was up 5.5 per cent to US$5.93.
