Market Update: RBA holds interest rates at 4.35%

The Reserve Bank of Australia has kept interest rates on hold at 4.35 per cent.

This is in line with wide-ranging analyst expectations, given positive indicators that inflation has been easing.

We’ll update you on the market’s reaction to the interest rates decision throughout the day.

Meanwhile, the ASX200 traded fairly flat in the lead up to the decision, slightly in the green, with Materials up well over 1.5 per cent and Energy by about 1.2 per cent, while Staples and Consumer Discretionary stocks felt market jitters.

In other news so far today:

Poseidon Nickel (ASX:POS) has been trading down close to 20 per cent, on the announcement that its CEO Craig Jones is ‘departing to pursue other opportunities’.

The timing is interesting… just a day after POS sold its nickel plant to Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) in a  $15 million deal. The company’s CFO Brendan Shalders will move into the CEO role from the start of next month.

POS has been trading at 0.7 cents.

Hydrogen play Hazer Group Limited (ASX:HZR) has raised $5.4 million through a Share Purchase Plan (SPP) with 50 cent shares.

The funds will be used to scale up production of hydrogen and graphite from the company’s commercial demonstration plant in Western Australia.

Hazer had already boosted its coffers by $9 million last month, through a Placement at the same 50 cent price.

HZR has been trading at 51.5 cents.

And Australian Vanadium (ASX:AVL) has gained about 10 per cent, after it produced its first batch of high-purity vanadium electrolyte, at its manufacturing facility in Western Australia.

The facility is designed to produce high-purity electrolyte of up to 33 MWh (megawatt-hour) per year of Vanadium Flow Battery energy storage.

The process uses a proven manufacturing technology from the US Vanadium LLC.

AVL has been trading at 1.7 cents.