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Good morning and welcome to the start of Week 22. The ASX200 is set to rise today with futures up +0.47% at 8.40am AEST.
The US markets finished green on Friday. The S&P500 climbed +0.70% and the NASDAQ ended higher at +1.10%.
The Dow Jones and Russell 2000 smallcap indexes ended up +0.01% and +1.04% respectively.
The ASX sold off by -1% on Friday, driven by macro concerns surrounding American private sector activity. At the same time, NVIDIA’s latest earning results failed to garner attention – but tech stocks were in vogue again on Friday US time, and now we’re seeing the benefits of contagion sentiment down under.
Worth noting is that the US is currently on a 3-day-weekend, too. Can we do better going our own way?
Looking at local stocks, Lendlease (ASX:LLC) is reportedly to unveil a global strategy today where it could divest all overseas assets.
Meanwhile, Smartpay (ASX:SMP) and Dicker Data (ASX:DDR) are set to release earnings today.
Elsewhere, Hammer Metals (ASX:HMX) has inked an earn-in agreement with South 32 (ASX:S32) regarding Hammer’s QLD-based Isa Valley lead-zinc-copper project. This comes as copper prices remain over +30% higher YoY (after paring gains on Friday.)
Staying with the orange metal, Castillo Copper (ASX:CCZ) is also to kick off a surface sampling campaign at the company’s ‘Big One’ deposit near Mt Isa. The exploration team will target fault structures on-site.
In forex, the AUD is still buying 66 US cents, which is where it has sat for most of this month.
In commodities, brent crude is at US$82.20/bbl, gold is at US$2,335.05/oz and copper sits at US$4.78/lb. Iron ore continues to sit at US$117/tn at the port of Dalian.
That’s market open – we’ll be with you later in the trading day.
