At The Bell — Australian shares are heading for a retreat on Thursday morning, with futures tipping a -0.3% contraction for the bourse. That red tip is largely thanks to Wall Street cooling down in Week 22; the U.S. indexes had opened to several new highs after a Memorial Day break, but are flat now.
Hear from all the ASX-listed companies that were at the RIU Resources Round-Up in Sydney, right here on HotCopper.com. Over a dozen video interviews here.
Traders Down Under had seemed to be bullish on the whole “no more hikes” that Wednesday’s CPI read gave us, but that barely lasted a day.
It’s a funny old thing, trading in Oz, because we missed all the gains that would have come down from the U.S. while we were worrying about Wednesday’s inflation print – and now that we have it, we’re back to aping Wall Street.
The best of the bunch over there was the Dow, up +0.4%; the S&P and Nasdaq are both drifting flat. London’s +0.1%, the Stoxx is mixed. Nikkei flat, too. With all those flat, apparently that means we are selling.
Anyway, the U.S. and Iran are still in peace talks as well; Trump last signalled that the two sides are some ways apart for the time being. To watch, for now.
Stocks to watch
In stocks, CommBank (ASX:CBA) now stands as Oz’s last Big Four bank holding out against Labor’s negative gearing changes, after ANZ (ASX:ANZ) formally tightened its policies around lending Wednesday. ANZ said it “remains committed to supporting customers in their property investment journey.”
Elsewhere, we now know that coal magnate Matt Latimore’s M Resources will be facing down India’s third-largest steelmaker, Jindal Steel, as the last two bidders for the Whyalla steelworks (as well as nearby iron ore mines).
And finally, Guzman Y Gomez (ASX:GYG) will be dropped from the ASX 200 in next week’s quarterly rebalance. More on that in the HotCopper Wire later today.
Temple & Webster (ASX:TPW) is the other high-profile drop coming in that reshuffle.
Buck and ore
In forex, the Oz dollar buys US 71.46c.
And to commodities, all in the greenback,
Brent Crude is down again, losing another -4.7%, to $94.97 today,
Iron Ore is largely flat at $105 a tonne in Singapore,
Gold down, $4,474/ounce, and,
US natgas futures at ~$3.08 per gigajoule.
That’s HotCopper‘s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre – happy trading today.
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