Market Open: Another soft start tipped for ASX as oil heads towards US$100bbl

ASX today – The ASX is forecast to have a soft opening today on the back of a Wall Street decline and an oil prices surge as the Middle East crisis continues to bubble.

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On Wall Street the increasing oil prices and rising treasury yields saw major indexes fall to two-week lows.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.31 per cent to close at 52,759, the S&P 500 dropped 66.82 points to finish at 7,642 and the Nasdaq slid one per cent to settle at 26,067.

Brent crude reached its highest levels in almost a month with the US increasing economic pressure on Iran.

Locally, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 4.5 per cent in July, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

The majority of the fall in employment came from males, which fell by 11,000 people.

Female employment recorded a smaller fall of 5,000.

On the market news front:

Regis Resources (ASX: RRL) generated a record net profit after tax of $715 million, a record EBITDA of $1.345 billion and record statutory operating cash flows of $1.247 billion;

MGX Resources (ASX: MGX) maintained a strong balance sheet to underpin its pivot to the Central Tanami gold project;

James Hardie (ASX: JHX) has announced the divestiture of its European operations;

Terrain Minerals (ASX: TMN) has unveiled seven new priority gold targets at Smokebush; and

Perenti (ASX: PRN) has agreed to divest BTP Group for $100 million.

Buck and ore

Now – in forex, the Oz dollar is buying US$0.710

Looking at commodities, all in the greenback,

Iron Ore is down 0.01% to $95.16 a tonne in Singapore today,

Brent Crude was up 1.54% to $93.034 per barrel

Gold is selling at $4519.45

US natgas futures were down 1.92% to $2.7591 per gigajoule.

That’s HotCopper’s Market Open, I’m Colin Sandell-Hay – happy trading.

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