Another oil-induced slide in the ASX is ahead of us today after the price of the commodity slumped in trading on Friday.
While eurozone shares rose 0.4% on Friday, the US S&P 500 fell 0.7% with energy shares down 3.3% on the plunging oil price.
Watch also for any impact on the big iron ore groups from the realisation prices fell nearly 7% last week.
The weak US lead saw ASX 200 futures drop 0.6% or 37 points, meaning a weak start to trade for the ASX later this morning.
Solid rebounds on Thursday and Friday weren’t enough to stop Australian shares closing the week slightly lower. The S&P/ASX 200 Index fell 14.4 points, or 0.3%, to 5716.2.
Watch for another round of selling among leading oil and energy stocks.
Woodside Petroleum shares lost 2.8% to $32.10. Santos slid 6.6% to $5.76, WorleyParsons fell 10.7% to $13.33 and Beach Energy dropped 11.3% at $1.53.
But not all oil leaders were hit hard- PNG oil and LNG group, Oil Search saw its shares rise 1.3% on Friday to $7.45 which gave it a small loss of 0.6% for the week.
Lower metal prices and the drop in iron ore saw BHP close 2.5% lower at $31.55, Rio Tinto lose 3.2% to $76.78 and South32 fell 6.5% to $3.16.
Local tech stocks also tumbled in the wake of yet another sell-off in US techs. Wisetech shares slipped 2.7% to $15.99, Altium shares fell 11% to $21.26, Afterpay Touch slid 12.4% to $11.29 Its annual meeting is this week), Appen closed 5.5% lower at $12.27 and Xero shed 11.2%, closing at $37.29.
Big bank shares closed higher despite the banking royal commission entering its seventh round and days of poor publicity for the likes of the Commonwealth and Westpac.
Shares in the Commonwealth Bank rose 3.5% to $71.30, ANZ was up 3.9% to $26.34, Westpac closed 3% higher at $26.04 and NAB lifted 3% to $24.48.
Shares in Kiwi website, Trade Me Group rose 18.6% to $5.62 after European private equity giant Apax Partners made an offer worth $NZ6.40 a share ($6.01), valuing the company at more than $2 billion.
And shares in discount retailer, The Reject Shop rose more than 17% to $2.79 after the Geminder family of Melbourne launched a surprise bid for the company.
That rise still left the shares down 50% so far in 2018, which helps explain why the bid emerged. Directors described the offer as “opportunistic’. Aren’t all bids thus?
Lithium related shares got a kick along after Mineral Resources after it announced it had reached a deal to sell a half-share in its Wodgina lithium project to battery metals giant Albemarle for $US1.15 billion ($1.58 billion).
Albemarle will form a 50-50 joint venture with Mineral Resources to own and operate the project and eventually build a lithium hydroxide plant. MinRes shares closed the week 15.6% higher at $15.48. That deal, however, obscured a big downgrade in 2018-19 earnings compared with 2017-18.
