Market Open: Week’s fade over, but not enough Oz tech to really join U.S. recovery

At The Bell — The Australian stock market is in for a flat open, with U.S. and European recoveries stemming the red tide sparked by U.S.-Iran hostilities – though not enough to truly carry the ASX 200 into positive territory.

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Before open, Aussie futures are pointing to a 3-4 point advance, which you can basically say is totally flat. That would leave us at ~8,760 to start today.

Compared to Wall Street and London/Europe, it’s pretty lacklustre: Over there, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both added around +1%, while the Dow advanced +0.2%. The larger Euro Stoxx 600 has been +0.8% stronger, too.

Maybe gold rebounding and oil sagging again will do something for Oz investors once they’ve had their morning coffee, though a lot of the U.S. gains have been tech-related, and we simply don’t have enough on the bourse for that to matter. Let’s see if we find other headwinds Down Under this morning.

(Just to point out the gap, it was tech heavyweights like Micron Technology (MU) and Sandisk (SNDK) that largely guided the rally overseas.)

Also, to note for our Kiwi readers, the NZ exchange is closed today.

ASX stocks to watch

Watch FDC Consolidated (ASX:FDC) today. The construction, fit-out, and non-residential building company had a debut to remember yesterday, booming +17% out the gate and eventually closing +12.3% stronger. The stock originally arrived at $3/share, but could push a whole lot higher if the hype remains.

Telstra (ASX:TLS) remains in the headlines, too, with South Australian police now investigating the death of an elderly person at a regional hospital that may be related to the nationwide outage that stopped Triple Zero calls.

Elsewhere, Chemist Warehouse co-founders Sam and Jack Gance have said they’re selling up to 20% of their $8B stake in Sigma Healthcare (ASX:SIG).

American Uranium (ASX:AMU) has wrapped up scoping and drilling at Lo Herma this week, telling shareholders the results have strengthened plans to upgrade the resource at the ISR uranium project in Powder River Basin.

And, Variscan Mines (ASX:VAR) has started maiden drilling for zinc at Guajaraz.

Buck and ore

In forex, the Oz dollar is buying US 69.4c today,

Then to commodities, all in the greenback,

Brent Crude has dropped -2.6%, to $75.97/barrel this morning,

Iron Ore down a little over -0.3%, and selling at $98.70 a tonne in Singapore,

Gold recovering, $4,127/ounce, and,

US natgas futures down, $3 per gigajoule.

That’s HotCopper‘s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre – happy trading today.

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