A rollercoaster ride in on Wall Street – capped by a Dow Jones record – and reports of an impending Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire have both buoyed Australian futures, with the ASX 200 expected to rise 0.17% at open today.
Forget “Trump trade;” the U.S. rally has been super-charged by a new “Bessent bounce” focused around the Treasury Secretary pick aiming to reduce deficits.
The Dow Jones enjoyed the biggest win from that excitement, back to its Friday record with a 0.7% hike. The Nasdaq composite and S&P 500 both followed with 0.1% rises.
Some U.S. traders may be buying earlier in the week before Wall Street closes its doors for the country’s Thanksgiving holiday – there’ll be no trading in the U.S. on Thursday (our Friday in Aus) which usually somewhat impacts the Aussie bourse.
Back home today, Yancoal Australia (ASX:YAL) and Stanmore Resources (ASX:SMR) were beaten to a big ticket buy on home soil, with U.S. miner Peabody to acquire Anglo American’s Aussie steel-making mine for $3.8 billion.
Ever in-focus Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) boss Chris Ellison has quit as Delta Lithium (ASX:DLI) chairman to focus on his final 18 months as MinRes managing director.
Bendigo Bank (ASX:BEN) has made moves too, picking up star Suncorp executive Fiona Thompson as the company’s new chief people officer.
The ASX will welcome two more debutants from 11am Sydney time – the fourth and fifth in just four days – with Vitrafy Life Sciences listing under VFY before Renerve Limited rings the bell at midday under RNV. The two Aussie bourse newcomers are today looking to raise $35 million and $7 million in capital respectively.
Webjet Group (ASX:WJL), Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS), Brickworks Limited (ASX:BKW), and Ramsay Health Care (ASX:RHC) all have AGMs scheduled today.
To forex, the Aussie dollar is buying 65 US cents.
To commodities, (in the greenback), we can see the biggest impact of the Middle East ceasefire news – especially in gold’s slump.
Iron Ore has dropped slightly to $101.95 a tonne in Singapore,
Brent Crude is down, at $73.12,
Gold is trading 3.3% worse at $2,627 per ounce, and,
US natgas futures recovered a major 6.6% to sell at $3.33 per gigajoule.
That’s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre, stick with us for HotCopper’s Market Update.