ASX Market Open: Oz miners to soften US trade war blows early in Week 29 | July 14

Australian shares have found a ready-made shield in iron ore heading into Week 29 trade, with the metal’s surprise revival – which has carried on to our mining majors – softening the turbulence from Trump’s latest tariffs moves.

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Iron ore is up as much as +4% over the last week (in Singapore) and is selling at US$99.50 on Monday; the metal’s best five-day performance since January.

BHP Group (ASX:BHP), Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO), and Fortescue (ASX:FMG) have all benefited to the tune of +9% to +17% – and that rush for the majors has to date protected Oz shares from Trump firing away even more levies.

The U.S. President wants to impose 35% tariffs on Canada and already announced 30% levies on both the EU and Mexico in a weekend address.

Iron ore’s $100 hope is stronger, though, leaving ASX futures down just -0.29%.

Elsewhere in Oz news, those same mining majors shielding the local bourse will share potentially market-moving quarterly updates. Rio, BHP, and Santos (ASX:STO) are all on the June quarter docket through Monday.

Ballard Mining is also planning to join the ASX hustle at 11am today, the latest in a long line of June-July debutants. The Mt Ida-based explorer will list under ticker code “BM1” and is looking to raise $30 million at 25c a share.

In a similar vein, we’ll be watching Stepchange Holdings (ASX:STH) through Week 29 after its Thursday arrival failed to excite; it’s already down -10% in just two days.

After a quiet last week for stats, we’ll now see consumer confidence on Tuesday, building data on Wednesday, and labour force trends (for June) on Thursday.

The latter is the biggest, with both jobs and unemployment info to be highlighted.

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Looking at forex, the Aussie dollar is 65.7 US cents.

And to commodities, all in the greenback,

Iron Ore is, as mentioned, starting the week at $99.50 a tonne in Singapore,

Brent Crude is at $70.60,

Gold is at $3,370 per ounce, and,

US natgas futures are +2.17% higher at $3.14 per gigajoule.

That’s HotCopper’s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre – good luck and happy trading.

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