The Australian sharemarket is expected to retreat at open today with ASX 200 futures forecasting a 0.28% drop after Wall Street lost its early momentum.
Traders hesitated overnight after South Korea’s president declared martial law. The decision was later rescinded by parliament – to which President Yoon Suk Yeol then agreed – but financially the damage had been done.
France too had an impact after far-right leader Marine Le Pen declared she was ready to back a no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier.
And among all this, China declared U.S. tech chips are “no longer safe” to buy.
Despite the global turmoil, U.S. markets had a good day until their late retreat – the Nasdaq composite and S&P 500 both touched new intraday highs.
Not every big Wall Street ticker was so strong though, with Tesla diving more than 2% on news Elon Musk’s multibillion pay-pack had been denied by courts again. On the other end, Amazon enjoyed a Cyber Monday deals-fuelled bump.
Back home, finance minister Katy Gallagher has told Big 4 leader Commonwealth Bank (ASX:CBA) it should strongly consider “rethinking” its surprise call to charge a $3 fee for withdrawing money at branches or the post office. The government and the Reserve Bank will both be looking into the CBA’s decision.
Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) has agreed to a mining team-up with Japan’s Sumitomo Metal to work on the copper-gold project in the Great Sandy Desert in Pilbara together.
Radiology-focused biotech company Pro Medicus (ASX:PME) will be one to watch too after founders Sam Hupert and Anthony Hall were approached to sell their shares – a number of institutional investors are reportedly sniffing around.
Also on the watchlist for HotCopper users is Sheffield Resources (ASX:SFX) after its solid Thunderbird Mine shipments and Magnum Mining (ASX:MGU) with its latest TREO grades.
More economic data is coming today too, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics set to release the third-quarter gross domestic product data at 11.30am AEDT; the data’s expected to show Aussie GDP rose 1.1% year-on-year.
Looking at forex, the Aussie dollar is buying 64.8 US cents.
To commodities, which are in the greenback,
Iron Ore has lifted 0.49% to $105.10 a tonne in Singapore,
Brent Crude is trading at $73.55,
Gold is trading at $2,642 per ounce, and,
US natgas futures has plunged 5% to trade at $3.04 per gigajoule.
That’s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre, stick with us for HotCopper’s Market Update.