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ASX today – There’s more hope coming this morning, with Wednesday’s early futures pointing to +0.34% gains after Wall Street again rolled on to more all-time records for its heavyweight indexes, the S&P and Dow Jones.
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Right now, we’re heading towards a 30-point advance at 10am in Sydney – though forgive this Market Link writer if he doesn’t believe it will really hold.
There’s been enough optimism coming from the U.S. through Week 2 and early in CY26 already, and that’s led to a flat Monday and a jump Tuesday, but both reversed into declines by the time we got to the closing bell.
With little buoying the Australian share market beyond U.S. hype – a pretty tried and true metric, of course – there’s every chance we go three from three on a green morning, then a fade by the time we have lunch.
With oil dropping away a little, too, on growing sentiments that Russia may finally end its invasion of Ukraine, some stocks may start to rewind.
And the ABS is releasing its first CPI data of the year today; that’s at 11:30am. It, too, could be a bigger catalyst for the ASX this Wednesday.
Now, let’s take a look at stock news and what’s coming today.
ASX stocks to watch
First up, the week’s biggest news has another chapter: BlueScope Steel (ASX:BSL) has suggested Kerry Stokes and Steel Dynamics are in the ballpark, but will need to up their $13B approach to get a deal through.
Loss-making Whyalla has also come into the fold; BlueScope had been sniffing around the steelworks and will insist Stokes’ SGH Limited look at it as well.
Elsewhere, Sandfire Resources (ASX:SFR) leads the way in copper excitement, +8% this week, after the podium precious metal beat US$13K yesterday. Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) and BHP (ASX:BHP) were similarly up to close Tuesday.
And, microcap Manuka (ASX:MKR) has caught attention on HotCopper after pledging to start gold and silver production by Q2 this financial year. It boasts assets in the Cobar Basin and in the Taranaki Bight in New Zealand.
Buck and ore
Now – in forex, the Oz dollar buys 67.4 U.S. cents.
Looking at commodities, all in the greenback,
Iron Ore has kept climbing, today selling at $106.55 a tonne in Singapore,
Brent Crude is down -2%, at $60.48/Bbl,
Gold is at $4,502 an ounce, and,
US natgas futures lost another -3.6%, to $3.39 per gigajoule.
That’s HotCopper’s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre – good luck, happy trading.
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