ASX Set For Testing Day As Wall St Unravels
Another big fall is in store for the local market today after Wall Street reversed much of Wednesday’s huge rise and plunged on Thursday.
Read MoreAnother big fall is in store for the local market today after Wall Street reversed much of Wednesday’s huge rise and plunged on Thursday.
Read MoreThe Australian economy will shrink by at least 0.5% during the current March quarter due to the coronavirus outbreak with the figure likely to increase as the epidemic continues to spread.
Read MoreThere’s further confirmation that the Chinese economy is in a deep recession. Two surveys of China’s service sector activity showed record falls, days after two similar surveys showed a similar situation in the country’s huge manufacturing sector.
Read MoreThe $15 billion TPG Vodafone merger is going ahead, subject to shareholder approvals after the ACCC said it will not appeal the Federal Court’s recent decision to greenlight the deal.
Read MoreThe retailer reported a 37% slide in first-half profit, thanks to more restructuring costs, redundancies and the loss of two major branded product lines in Apple and Country Road. There’s again no dividend to encourage shareholders.
Read MoreIron ore prices look set to continue this week’s rally after Vale, the big Brazilian miner was forced to close an 11 million tonnes a year mine.
Read MoreIt should be a buoyant start to ASX trading today after Wall Street closed with a 1,000 plus point gain for the Dow and solid gains for other measures.
Read MoreHere’s a couple of views of the December quarter GDP rise of 0.5% quarter on quarter and 2.2% through the year (which was helped by a 0.2% revision upwards to 0.6% growth in the three months to September).
Read MoreThe RBA’s rate cut and bets that another will follow in the next month or so have seen questions again raised over the share prices and sustainability of bank dividends at their current levels.
Read MoreA big day today for interim (and in the case of QBE and Rio Tinto, final) dividends. A total of 16 ASX 200 companies go ex-dividend today (Thursday).
Read MoreThe Australian economy grew by a better than expected 0.5% in the final three months of 2019, supported by household spending in November in the so-called Black Friday sales, government spending and higher business inventories (mostly iron ore and coal).
Read MoreIt would be fair to say that Australia’s new car market remains in a deep recession after February became the 23 monthly fall in sales in the last 24 months.
Read MoreIn a rare between official meetings move, the US Federal Reserve has cut its key interest rate by a larger than normal half a percent as the impact of the COVID-19 virus continues to roil markets and starts to damage the global economy.
Read MoreThe cut in the cash rate to a new all-time low of 0.50% sent banking stocks into a slump that dragged the S&P/ASX 200 index down from a session high of 6524.3 to a closing 6435.7 points.
Read MoreThe RBA has become the first central bank to respond directly to the growing impact of the virus on economic growth, especially in China and especially after last week’s massive sell-off.
Read MoreLast week it was failed Jeanswest being saved by Hong Kong-based investors, yesterday it was collapsed discount department store Harris Scarfe that is being taken over (subject to some final details being sorted out) by Australian investors.
Read MoreJudging from the weaker than forecast final data for the December quarter’s national accounts, and the even weaker January data, the Australian economy has moved very close to the edge of a slump into negative territory before the coronavirus hit in February.
Read MoreSo where will the ASX 200 go this morning – follow Wall Street higher by 5%, a surge that saw the main indexes double their gains in the last hour of trading – or meander higher, waiting for the Reserve Bank to rule on interest rates, after a ‘modest’ 34 rise in overnight futures?
Read MoreChina is hovering on the edge of a major crisis – the COVID-19 crisis has strangled manufacturing and services, left wide areas of the country silent and now it is hitting some of the country’s heavily indebted financial and industrial groups.
Read MoreAustralia’s financial regulators held an emergency teleconference on Monday to discuss the impact of the coronavirus outbreak ahead of today’s meeting of the Reserve Bank board.
Read MoreCaltex Australia shares fell more than 2% on Monday on news that the company had rejected one of its suitors, while at the same time encouraging it to remain in discussions.
Read MoreA sharp rise in exports as well as better sales of two key consumer products bought or developed in the last year or so have enabled Bega Cheese to offset the ravages of the drought on its core dairy business.
Read MoreUS shares fell 11.5% last week, Eurozone shares fell 12.4% and Japanese shares lost 10%. Australian shares followed the global lead and saw a 9.8% fall with IT, energy, retailers and materials seeing the steepest falls.
Read MoreGold and to a lesser extent, silver, the traditional alternatives to sovereign bonds, have lost their lustre in the past week to 10 days.
Read MoreOPEC and its ‘friends’ are due to meet in Vienna later this week and high on the agenda will be the question: should we cut output deeper after the huge slide in prices last week on growing fears about the impact on demand from the COVID-19 virus?
Read MoreWatch markets in Asia and Australia slide today when trading resumes in Asia – the plunge in manufacturing activity in China in February was starling, much worse than any forecasts and will trigger a new round of instability, especially with COVID-19 cases outside China growing faster than inside that country.
Read MoreThe December 31 half and full-year earnings season is over for the ASX 200 and very quickly the current June quarter is starting to look weaker than thought.
Read MoreBushfire damage and coronavirus are now big factors for the RBA tomorrow. Then there’s the December quarter GDP figures in the national accounts on Wednesday, plus the start of month data on retail sales, building approvals, house prices, trade, and car sales.
Read MoreThe global spread of COVID-19 will dominate in the week ahead as investors attempt to assess how long it will take to be contained outside China and how bad the hit to economic activity will be.
Read MoreOn the last day of the 2019-20 interim reporting season, the retailer reported a fall in pre-tax profits due to weaker local sales and higher support payments to its almost 200 franchisees. Weak as that was, the outlook for the current year is even more alarming.
Read MoreThe growing COVID-19 crisis saw another sharp sell-off ahead of the close on Wall Street fall on Thursday, pushing key indexes into correction territory with a fall of 10% in the past week.
Read MoreTravel agency giant Flight Centre has cut its full-year profit guidance by 22% and interim dividend by a third, thanks to the growing uncertainty caused by the coronavirus outbreak that is now stretching around the globe.
Read MoreDespite a solid interim result for struggling discount retailer The Reject Shop, the shares sold off by more than 8% yesterday as investors initially took fright at a surprise $25 million heavily discounted share issue.
Read MoreThe a2Milk Company surprised yesterday with a solid result and update that made it clear the company is getting benefits from the COVID-19 crisis in China.
Read MoreAir New Zealand has confirmed earlier guidance this week that its first-half profit slumped sharply from a year ago.
Read MoreShares in Melbourne-based packing group, Orora rose yesterday after the ACCC cleared the sale of Orora’s Fibre business to Japanese-owned Australian Paper.
Read MoreOne explanation for the solid performance yesterday by Costa Group shares is that the fruit and vegetable grower and supplier made it through 2019 and to an earnings announcement with a repeat of the downgrades that started in January 2019 and helped drive the share price to record lows.
Read MoreIt will be a stronger start to trading on the ASX on Thursday, even though the futures market ended its session in the red to the tune of around 18 points. That is at least 90% lower than the fall on Tuesday.
Read MoreA third day of selling has now sliced almost $A130 billion from the value of the ASX 200 and all but wiped out 2020’s gains as fears about the upsurge in cases of COVID-19 outside China continued to escalate.
Read MoreRio Tinto will shower shareholders with billions of dollars in cash with a record final dividend for 2019 to go with the earlier record interim as high iron ore prices helped the company maintain earnings at a high level.
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