The Australian share market has slipped from its fresh 10-year high with over half of the market slipping into the red and Telcos leading the drag on profit-taking after Telcos rose 3.6 per cent yesterday on a potential new $15 billion Telco being created. From the outset we also had negative Wall Street leads with US stocks snapping their four-day winning streak.
Broker upgrades and downgradesDomino's Pizza Enterprises
(ASX:DMP) was downgraded to a neutral position (from a buy) by Goldman Sachs.
Sandfire
(ASX:SFR) has been upgraded to neutral from sell by Citi, while Bell Potter has marked the company as a hold.
Bell Potter also marked Telstra
(ASX:TLS) and TPG Telecom
(ASX:TPG) as a sell, which is seeing the duo claw back some of yesterday’s gains.
The S&P/ASX 200 index is 9 points or 0.1 per cent lower at 6,343. On the futures market the SPI is 7 points lower.
Company news Afterpay Touch Group
(ASX:APT) has kicked off a capital raise via a $20 million share purchase plan. The plan is open to shareholders today and is set to close on Monday 17 September 2018. Afterpay has already raised $117 million through an institutional placement. The proceeds from the raise will be used to accelerate its global expansion. Afterpay shares have gained 385 per cent year-on-year and today it’s trading 2 per cent higher at $18.38
Telstra
(ASX:TLS) announced a European telco executive, Niek Jan (Nicolass John) van Damme has been nominated to join the giant’s board as a non-executive director. He was previously responsible for fixed line and mobile communications in Germany for Deutsche Telekom, a €22 billion business. At the same time, Telstra also announced Russell Higgins will retire at the AGM in October after being on the board for nine years, while Trae Vassallo will leave at the same time after 4 per cent lower $3.10.
Best and worst performersThe best performing sector is health adding 1 per cent, while the worst performing sector is telcos, shedding 3.8 per cent.
The best performing stock in the S&P/ASX 200 is Bapcor
(ASX:BAP), rising 2.5 per cent to $7.45, followed by shares in Beach Energy Limited
(ASX:BPT) and Blackmores Limited
(ASX:BKL).
The worst performing stock in the S&P/ASX 200 is Sandfire Resources Nl
(ASX:TPM), dropping 6.7 per cent to $7.22, followed by shares in TPG Telecom Limited
(ASX:TPM) and Mineral Resources Limited
(ASX:MIN).
Asian marketsLower: Japan’s Nikkei has lost 0.3 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng has lost 1.3 per cent and the Shanghai Composite has lost 0.6 per cent.
Commodities and the dollar Gold is trading at US$1,203 an ounce..
Iron ore price fell 2.2 per cent to US$65.87 and its futures are pointing to a rise of 1.1 per cent.
One Australian dollar is buying 72.61 US cents.
CryptocurrenciesBitcoin has lost 1.2 per cent to US$6,962, Ethereum has lost 2.8 per cent to US$281 and EOS has shed 3.4 per cent to US$5.97, in the last 24 hours.
