Overnight: Filling The Void

By Greg Peel

Groundhog Day

Yesterday’s trade on the ASX was largely a repeat performance of Tuesday’s activity with the ASX200 dropping early in the day only to spend the rest of the session grinding back to flat. This time no sector closed with a move of 1% or more.

The index fell a full -37 points to late morning, driven initially, one assumes, by Wall Street’s Brexit disappointment but a second leg down suggested perhaps a decent selling order. Once exhausted the market turned on its heels.

Sector ups and downs were a bit more evenly distributed yesterday than was the case on Tuesday, with telcos (-0.9%) the worst performer despite utilities, REITs and bond proxies within industrials being the most popular targets on the day.

Energy (+0.3%) enjoyed an oil price bounce, which became more pronounced last night, while IT (+0.2%) finally had an up-day.

Embattled WiseTech Global ((WTC)) came out of its second trading halt yesterday and rallied 8.5%, suggesting investors are happy to back the company’s defence against the short-seller’s accusations, which some analysts have described as rubbish.

WiseTech was the second best index performer behind Gold Road ((GOR)), which released a positive update on its Gruyere gold development and enjoyed a glowing assessment from Macquarie.

Peer Saracen Minerals ((SAR)) came in third with a 5.1% gain on the release of its production report while Western Areas ((WSA)) joined in the materials theme with a 4.2% gain given nickel is where’s the action is right now.

On the flipside, lithium miner Galaxy Resources ((GXY)) fell -7.1% to be the worst performer after mining leviathan Rio Tinto ((RIO)) realised that the waste form its borates business in California is loaded with lithium.

Beyond that, nothing much to read into yesterday, other than the market does not seem to want to go down at present, even if there’s nothing much to drive it up.

Interestingly our futures are up a full 33 points or 0.5% this morning with the S&P up only 0.3%, which is possibly explained by a 3% jump in the oil price overnight and another incremental comeback for iron ore.

Earnings Focus

Mark Zuckerberg was grilled all last night by a Congressional committee as part of the antitrust investigation but nothing much seemed to be achieved. Facebook shares rose 2% as a result but all three FAGs have been in holding patterns during a lengthy process which one wonders will come to anything. Regulation may be justifiable but what regulation?

Otherwise all focus last night on Wall Street was on earnings.

Big misses were posted by both Boeing and Caterpillar, but both Dow stocks rose on the day. For Boeing it was all about management insisting the 737 Max will be back in the sky by year’s end but there was no real reason for Caterpillar to rally other than the fact both stocks have been the poster children for the impact of Trump’s tariffs and summarily beaten down as a result.

Texas Instruments had reported a miss in the aftermarket on Tuesday night and last night fell -7.5% to drag down chip stocks in general and rekindle global slowdown fears. Yet the major indices all finished with late rallies to inch ever closer to the previous high.

There was more action after the bell, with Microsoft (Dow) posting top and bottom line beats but managing only to trade flat in the aftermarket because everyone already owns it.

In a tale of the old and the new, Ford (Dow) is down -2.5% on its result while Tesla is up 12%.

Another economic bellwether of sorts is eBay, which is down -3%.

The running tally continues to be one of 83% beats to 12% misses which should suggest a net rally, but as always misses are more highly punished and this time around most beats have been expected, which seems illogical given a “beat” implies better than expected. This time it’s about beating already too-low estimates.

So it’s earnings and not much else at least until next week’s Fed meeting, the Brexit deadline (which will likely be moved ahead three months) and news, if any, on trade.

Commodities

Following on from Tuesday’s speculation OPEC+ may be preparing to further cut crude production, last night saw the US weekly inventory count show a decline for the first time in six weeks. WTI subsequently jumped 3%, with commentators pointing to a market weighted to the short side.

The nickel price is currently on a yo-yo while the other base metals do nothing much.

Iron ore has now strung together two incremental gains.

The Aussie is steady at US$0.6853.

Today

The SPI Overnight closed up 33 points or 0.5%.

The flashers are out and about over the next 24 hours with estimates for October manufacturing PMIs in Australia, Japan, the eurozone and US. We recall it was the previous month’s US flash that sent Wall Street tumbling.

Tonight’s US durable goods orders data are also important on the same theme.

It will be For he’s a jolly good fellow time at tonight’s ECB meeting as Mario Draghi departs the scene.

It is a very big day on the local stock market calendar today.

Among those companies holding AGMs are APA Group ((APA)), Carsales ((CAR)), Crown Resorts ((CWN)), GUD Holdings ((GUD)), JB Hi-Fi ((JBH)), Magellan Financial ((MFG)), South32 ((S32)), Scentre Group ((SGR)) and Tabcorp ((TAH)).

Among those posting quarterly production reports are Fortescue Metals ((FMG)), Galaxy Resources ((GXY)), Mineral Resources ((MIN)), Newcrest Mining ((NCM)) and Sandfire Resources ((SFR)).

Among those providing quarterly updates are AMP ((AMP)), IOOF ((IFL)), Qantas ((QAN)) and UR Westfield ((URW)).

Australian Pharmaceutical Industries ((API)) will report earnings.

The Australian share market over the past thirty days…