Market Open: ASX roller coaster ride forecast to slide down this morning

ASX today – The roller coaster that is the ASX at the moment is expected to begin on a downward motion this morning.

The local market is likely to follow Wall Street which fell before the weekend after a stronger-than-expected August jobs report reignited fears of further US Federal Reserve interest rate hikes

The US economy added 162,000 jobs in August, beating forecasts, while the unemployment rate ticked to 4.1%.

The Dow Jones tumbled more than 260 points, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq also closed lower.

Meanwhile, local jobs rose by 110,700 to 16.3 million in the June quarter, according to labour account figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

“Filled jobs rose 0.7 per cent in the June quarter, the fifth quarterly rise in a row. This was driven by a 0.4 per cent rise in main jobs and a 4.6 per cent rise in secondary jobs,” Sean Crick, ABS head of labour statistics, said.

“The rise in secondary jobs coincided with recent labour force data showing stronger growth in part-time employment of 1.0 per cent compared to full-time employment of 0.3 per cent. This resulted in a 0.3 per cent fall in average hours worked per job.”

Through the year, secondary jobs grew 11.7 per cent (122,000 jobs) and main jobs grew 1.9 per cent (288,400 jobs).

On the market news front:

ROX Resources (ASXL RXL) reported strong progress with Youanmi gold mine construction;

Focus Minerals (ASX: FML) says it hit impressive intersections at Green Light;

Yari Resources (ASX: YAR) has revealed multiple product pathways at Arcadia coal project;

Indiana Resources (ASX: IDA) is spinning the bit at Company Well; and

Manhattan Gold Corporation (ASXL: MHC) has hitd wide gold intercepts at Jaws.

Buck and ore

Now – in forex, the Oz dollar is buying US$0.720

Looking at commodities, all in the greenback,

Iron Ore was up 0.15 per cent to $99.57 per tonne in Singapore today,

Brent Crude was down 0.91 per cent to $95.405 per barrel,

Gold was selling at $4432.56,

US natgas futures were down 1.48 per cent to $2.9310 per gigajoule.

That’s HotCopper’s Market Open, I’m Colin Sandell-Hay – happy trading.

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