The ASX is looking for a bright start later this morning despite ending a downbeat series of trading session last week that saw the ASX 200 close 1% lower.
The ASX 200 futures market was up 26 points at the close overnight Friday after a reasonable session on Wall Street where fears about an escalation of Donald Trump’s trade war with china failed to have a lasting impact.
The ASX 200 index eased 6 points, or 0.1 per cent, to 6234 on Friday while the All Ordinaries ended the day 1 point lower at 6326 and the Australian dollar traded at US73.62c. It rose Friday night to close just over 74 US cents.
Profits start flowing this week for the June 30 financial year and according to US reports Amcor is on the brink of announcing a multi-billion dollar takeover in the US (see separate story).
Apple’s sold result, rise and move past the trillion dollar valuation level had no impact here.
But shares technology firms Xero rose 4% to $44.72 and Appen climbed 6.5% to $11.57. Those rises left Xero shares down 0.3% for the week and Appen shares up just 1.3% (which was better than the wider market). Aftertouch pay shares, another hot stock saw its shares rise 4% on Friday, leaving its shares still down half a percent.
Banks were under pressure on Friday after the Productivity Commission released its report on competition and accused the lenders (and insurers) of flooding the market with similar products.
Commonwealth Bank shares fell 1.2% (and down 3.3% for the week), Westpac shares dipped 1% and 1.9% for the week, National Australia Bank shares dipped 0.6% on the day and 2.6% for the week and ANZ shares fell 0.9% on Friday and 2.8% for the week.
But Insurance Australia shares ended up 1.2% after easing 0.4% on Friday. QBE shares were up 2.2% for the week.
Miners were the worst performing sector over the week, however, with the sector down 2.4% over the week. BHP shares fell nearly 3%, Rio shares were down almost 6% as some analysts gave its interim results and record dividend the thumbs down.
Shares in South32 fell 5.5%, OZ Minerals, 2.9% and Fortescue Metals shares lost 6.6%.
Some smaller miners were hit hard – shares in lithium hopeful Orocobre were down 11.7%, Independence Group dropping 10.9% and shares in Mineral Resources were off 2.7%.
Telstra shares though rose up 2.1% after a big management reshuffle on Monday. Transurban (which reports tomorrow) share its securities down 0.1% and CSL shares fell 0.4%.
Shares in Woolworths were off 1.5%, but Wesfarmers shares were up 1.1%. Harvey Norman shares fell 2% and JB Hi Fi shares dropped 5.1% ahead of its results a week today.
Credit Corp Group shares jumped nearly 19% after a good result and shares in Brisbane-based testing services provider ALS jumped 12.2%.
