Market Open: Oz shares back green as August reporting gets underway in earnest

At The Bell — Australian shares are heading for a +0.3% gain this morning, largely helped by U.S. equities surging early in Week 32. That trendsetting Wall Street rush came after strong tech reporting from the “Mag 7,” especially Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, which all gained between 5–6% on day one.

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The S&P 500 was 1.5% stronger in New York, while the Dow Jones tracked similarly and the Nasdaq composite was supercharged to a +2.2% advance.

The green gains in Oz set up our own reporting run, which really gets going in earnest Tuesday. We had a resources fortnight already, mostly revolving around quarterlies, and now we get into the rest of the bourse.

Some macro elements may spook Aussie traders a little, though it shouldn’t reach too far into equities: Oz housing has kept draining away, especially in Sydney and Melbourne, with national prices falling -0.7% in July. The national fuel excise that has kept bowser prices down also wrapped up this week.

We get a look at June household spending data at 11.30AM, too.

ASX stocks to watch

Now, let’s look at stocks. Here, Om Holdings (ASX:OMH) is trending on the HotCopper forums early after signing a long-term binding “take-or-pay” offtake deal with Element 25 (ASX:E25) for the manganese concentrate produced at the latter’s now-expanding Butcherbird mine in WA.

Elsewhere, Mandrake Resources (ASX:MAN) has picked up three more “strategic” leases in the central Utah lithium project, which will help the Oz explorer “consolidate [the] high volume lithium brine reservoir acreage.”

Marmota (ASX:MEU) has stretched its Greenewood gold discovery again this week, ballooning the program to around 26,000 metres. HotCopper understands Stage 3 drilling will begin by the end of the month.

Bell Potter has set a “buy” target for Frontier Energy (ASX:FHE) after the renewables developer pocketed a $280M funding package for Warroona.

And Credit Corp (ASX:CCP) and Charter Hall (ASX:CHC) are reporting today.

Buck and ore

In forex, the Oz dollar is buying US 70c today,

Then to commodities, all in the greenback,

Brent Crude is down another -5%, now selling at $83.34/barrel,

Iron Ore is down -2%, to $93.90 a tonne in Singapore,

Gold today $4,059/ounce, and,

US natgas futures up, $2.78 per gigajoule.

That’s HotCopper‘s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre – happy trading today.

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