Join our daily newsletter At The Bell to receive exclusive market insights
The Australian share market is likely to open lower this morning following a bearish day on Wall Street.
At the close, the dominant colour was red. The S&P 500 had lost 67 points (-1.42 per cent) to 4,659 points, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had slipped 175 points (-0.48 per cent) to 36,115 and the Nasdaq tumbled 381 points (-2.51 per cent) to 14,806.
In London, the FTSE 100 ended higher on Thursday, gaining 12 points, or 0.16 per cent, to 7,564.
The Paris CAC40 slipped 0.5 percent, while Germany’s DAX gained 0.13 percent.
Yesterday the S&P ASX 200 gained 35 points (0.45 per cent) to close at 7,797.5 points.
The SPI futures index was down 37 points this morning, with the market expected to open around 7,329 points.
Wall Street
Earnings season is underway, with Delta Air Lines the first major player to report.
Delta announced sales of $9.47 billion, which beat analyst expectations. Revenue was down 17% from $11.44 billion during the last three months of 2019, just before the coronavirus pandemic began and from which the company is still to fully recover.
In its earnings release, Delta said that its operation has stabilised, and that the omicron variant had caused it to cancel only one per cent of its flights over the past week.
In the fourth quarter, Delta posted its highest revenue since late 2019, thanks in part to strong holiday bookings and more business travel.
Delta’s shares were up more than 3% in afternoon trading.
Australian outlook
There are three new listings due to hit the bourse today.
Explorer Far East Gold (ASX:FEG) raised $12 million to develop its growing gold resource at three projects in Indonesia’s Sunda Magmatic Arc. The Brisbane-based company also holds three Australian mining projects located in central Queensland’s Drummond Basin and Connors Arc regions.
More than $40 million has been spent to date developing the FEG portfolio.
ChemX Materials (ASX:CMX) lists today after its IPO raised $8 million. The Perth-based company is developing projects and processes to deliver solutions for energy transition and a cleaner environment. It has technology developed in-house to process and supply high purity alumina (HPA) to the lithium-ion battery and semi-conductor markets. It also has a Halloysite and Kaolin Project, holding farmland tenements near Kimba on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula and which is focused on developing materials for hydrogen storage, CO2 capture and other nanotube technology.
Resilience Mining Mongolia (ASX:RM1) is headquartered in Adelaide. It raised $6 million and is focused on large copper and gold deposits close to Rio Tinto’s (ASX:RIO) proven Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine.
It acquired its projects from Kincora Copper (ASX:KCC), which gets a 9.9% interest in the stock on listing.
Commodities
Gold was trading lower this morning at US$1,815.40 an ounce having slipped 0.65 per cent overnight.
Iron ore was up 1.5 percent at US$128.66 a tonne as traders absorbed news out of Brazil yesterday that Vale and other miners were halting operations due to heavy rains.
Brent crude slipped 1.45 per cent higher at US$81.49 a barrel.
Nickel continued recent gains to trade at US$22,175 a tonne.
Currency
The Australian dollar has slipped against the greenback, buying US$0.7276 (down 0.8 per cent), €0.6354 (down 0.16 per cent), £0.5310 (down 0.05 per cent) and NZ$1.061 (steady).
Happy Friday.
