Australian shares are set to open higher this morning. Shares on Wall Street jumped in morning trading, led by tech stocks. European stocks rallied as the British prime Minister defeated a challenge to her leadership. Trump made some upbeat comments about a trade deal with China - this helped Euro stocks too. The Aussie dollar has been low – but rallied above 72 US cents yesterday. The ASX futures are pointing to a 13 points fall. Yesterday the Australian share market closed 78 points higher or 1.4 per cent higher at 5654.
Local economic newsThe Reserve Bank will release consumer inflation expectations December
MarketsWall Street closed up yesterday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.6 per cent to close at 24,527, the S&P 500 added 0.5 per cent to close at 2651 and the NASDAQ gained 1 per cent to close at 7098.
European markets closed up: London’s FTSE 1.1 per cent, Paris gained 2.2 percent and Frankfurt 1.4 per cent.
Asian markets closed up Tokyo’s Nikkei added 2.2 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 1.6 per cent up, and China’s Shanghai Composite higher 0.3 per cent.
Company newsiSignthis
(ASX:ISX) subsidiary, iSignthiseMoney, trading as ISXPayis has gone live on its own integrated and unified neobanking platform for Visa, Mastercard and JCB. John Karantzis, CEO of iSignthis says “We have passed yet another milestone, where our first EU based merchant is using our unified transactional banking, deposit functions and bank to bank transfer functions". The Company has been developing its merchant and business focused neo-banking capabilities since 2015. The Company has also applied for an Australian ADI license directly, bypassing the ‘restricted ADI’ step, with APRA authorisation anticipated early Q2 2019.
Shares in iSignthis
(ASX:ISX) trading flat at $0.16 yesterday.
Ex-dividendsEclipx Group
(ASX:ECX) paying 8 cents fully franked.
Metcash
(ASX:MTS) paying 6.5 cents fully franked.
Senetas
(ASX:SEN) is paying 0.37 cents unfranked.
CurrenciesOne Australian Dollar at 8:30am was buying 72.14 US cents, 57.13 Pence Sterling, 81.69 Yen and 63.48 Euro cents.
Commodities Gold has gained $3.30 to US$1251 an ounce.
Silver has gained$0.21 to US$14.84 an ounce.
Oil has lost $0.47 to US$51.37 a barrel.
Iron Ore futures suggest a fall of 0.1 per cent.