Global Markets Swing Higher
Markets will open quietly in Australia and Asia today after last week’s madcap Trump-inspired rally, which ran out of puff in trading in Europe and the US on Friday night.
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Copper, Iron Ore Explode
Copper and iron ore prices traded wildly last week leading to fears there is a bust rapidly looming as frantic trading by Chinese speculators destabilises some markets.
Read MoreBuffett Breaks Silence On Wells Fargo Scandal
Wells Fargo shares jumped 14% last week in the wake of the surprise Trump victory as investors speculated that it will escape any further official action over the bogus accounts scandal that has so far cost the bank its long time chairman and CEO, and $US185 million in fines and penalties.
Read MoreDiary: RBA Minutes, AGM Season, Fedspeak Returns
Markets will continue to fret this week about Donald Trump becoming the 45th president of the United States, so investors will be nervy and trading volatile.
Read MoreGold Loses Shine, Oil Slips
Oil and gold prices took big hits last week amid the volatility in base metals, coal and iron ore.
Read MoreBuffett Cashes Out Of Wrigley
Another solid quarterly report from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway – operating profit rose (it excludes one off earning from asset sales), but net income also fell from a year ago.
Read More‘Certainty’ Rally Set To Fade
The Trump rally developed a few holes overnight Thursday with only the blind opportunists on parts of Wall Street still seeing a financial nirvana for many companies from the President-elect’s policies – whatever they are.
Read MoreTreasury Wine Pops On US Exposure
While shareholders in Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), our born again wine giant, got a bullish update at yesterday’s annual meeting in Adelaide with news of faster than expected gains on cost cuts and product rationalisation, it was the company’s exposure to the US economy that saw the shares surge more than 8% off the back of the shock US election result.
Read MoreBlueScope Upgrades Outlook
BlueScope Steel (BSL) shares surged more than 12% at one stage yesterday, not because of a bullish trading update at the annual meeting, but because of the company’s exposure to the North American market and the perceived benefits of a Trump presidency.
Read MoreNew Zealand Cuts Rates, Dollar ‘Higher Than Sustainable’
Life goes on outside the US and Donald Trump’s win.
Read MoreRio Execs Caught In African Payment Probe
Rio Tinto has suspended one of its most senior executives after discovering payments made to a consultant working on one of its former projects in Africa – the massive Simandou iron ore project in the West African country of Guinea.
Read MoreChinese Inflation Gathers Pace
The deflationary grip on China’s huge manufacturing sector continues to disappear as activity and demand recover from the long slumber when pricing power fell into the deep freeze.
Read MoreCBA Cops First Strike As Shareholders Revolt
Another tone-deaf Australian company got punished yesterday when Commonwealth Bank shareholders revolted over the bank’s payments to top executives, inflicting on the lender with a historic “first strike” against its remuneration report.
Read MoreWebjet Unloads Zuji For $56m
Webjet shares were one of a handful of stocks to withstand the selling rush yesterday on the shock US election result.
Read MoreCoal Boom Forms Bubble
The boom in coal hit ridiculous levels overnight with reports that hard coking coal prices (which started running before anything else around May of this year) had hit the highest level since 2011 – over $US300 a tonne.
Read MoreIncitec Fails To Ignite
Shares in explosives and fertiliser group in Incitec Pivot (IPL) bounced around yesterday as investors couldn’t quite figure out the full year result.
Read MoreKiwi Media Merger Blocked
The biggest shake up in NZ media has been rejected by the country’s competition regulator in a “draft’ decision declining to greenlight the merger of NZME and Fairfax Media’s Kiwi newspapers and websites. NZME is the spin off of APN News and Media’s New Zealand print and radio interests. News Corp was the largest shareholder, but revealed yesterday in its quarterly results that the 14.9% stake had been sold.
Read MoreMasters Shutdown Fails To Dent Dulux
Paint maker Dulux (DLX) has lifted profit 15.6% to $139.4 million for the year to September 30 and expects to be reporting another gain for the 2016-17 financial year.
Read MoreCBA Executive Pay Under Fire
The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) faces a moment of truth at its annual meeting today where its pay policies are expected to come under sustained assault from shareholders large and small.
Read MoreChina Trade Remains Weak
Another weak trade report from China for October with exports falling 7.3% in US dollar terms and imports down 1.4%.
Read MoreRelief Rally Out Of Puff As Investors Await The Polls
The Hillary Clinton for President relief rally will run out of puff in Australia today following Wall Street’s best day since March.
Read MoreDomino’s Upgrades Outlook
Domino’s Pizza Enterprises (DMP) shares rallied sharply yesterday in the day’s big FBI inspired boost to Hillary Clinton’s bid for the US Presidency, rising as much as 7% after the company increased its full financial year forecast for pre-tax profit growth to 30%, up from 25%.
Read MoreWestpac Lowers ROE Target
Westpac Banking Corporation’s (WBC) full year result boosted the wider market yesterday, helping add to the FBI boost for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in tonight’s US Presidential elections.
Read MoreKPMG’s New Warning On Banks
Accounting and financial services firm, KPMG says there could be more change ahead for the big four banks, whose collective 2015-16 profits fell 2.5% to a combined $29.6 billion – thanks to the sharp fall reported by the ANZ.
Read MoreUGL Directors Back Cimic Offer
The majority of UGL Ltd’s (UGL) directors have recommended the engineering group’s shareholders accept Spanish-controlled construction giant CIMIC’s $524 million takeover bid.
Read MoreOZ Carrapateena Mine One Step Closer
The $1 billion proposed Carrapateena copper and gold mine in South Australia has moved a step closer with OZ Minerals (OZL) releasing an updated assessment of its plans for the huge deposit.
Read MoreWestpac Profit Flat, Maintains Payout
An unimpressive full year result from Westpac (WBC) as it suffered a blow out in dud loans in the year to September 30.
Read MoreDiary: Trump Or Clinton, Local AGMs, US Earnings Wind Down
In one respect it’s a quieter week for global markets and investors after last week’s flood of start of month data and meetings of major central banks, not to mention the flow of earnings reports in the US, UK, Asia and Australia.
Read MoreBuffett’s Cash Pile Mounts
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway said third-quarter operating profit rose 6.6% thanks to contributions from newly acquired manufacturing businesses such as Duracell and Precision Castparts.
Read MoreOil Dives On More Uncertainty
Oil prices copped a global hammering last week and face more of the same this week as investors fret about the result of Tuesday’s US Presidential elections and the lack of any solid progress on OPEC’s ambitions to get global agreement on an oil production cap.
Read MoreWild Ride Ahead Of Presidential Poll
Standby for a few days of very volatile markets here and offshore as the world watches how America votes on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning (Sydney Time) in the 2016 elections.
Read MoreUS Oil Production Creeps Higher
Oil markets didn’t like the surprise news this week that US crude oil production is again rising. Detailed government data this week showed output rose in August for the first time since March.
Read MoreCoal Exports Narrow Trade Deficit
Australia’s trade balance remains in the red but the chances of a surplus reappearing in the next few months deficit have risen after the deficit for September fell sharply off the back of the latest commodity price surge.
Read MoreANZ Joins Move Away From Wealth Management
The ANZ Bank (ANZ) has cracked and wants to go to being just being a bank. A big bank, mind you but not being a vertically integrated all singing and dancing one stop product shop, that also is a bank.
Read MoreBoral Earnings To Miss, Blames The Weather
The ending of the El Nino dry spell with widespread wet weather across much of the country since May has taken a toll on the revenue and earnings of Boral (BLD).
Read MoreDomain Slowdown Rattles Fairfax
House prices in Sydney and Melbourne are still charging ahead, but that’s of no longer of any benefit to Fairfax Media (FXJ) and its Domain online property business, and probably to its bigger competitor, News Corp and its 61% owned subsidiary, REAG Group (REA), judging by the market reaction yesterday to poor news from Fairfax.
Read MoreSouth32 Mops Up Peabody Mine
The first big asset shuffle of the current resources bounce emerged yesterday when South32 (S32), the BHP Billiton (BHP) spin-off, revealed it is paying $US200 million to the bankrupt Peabody Energy for the Metropolitan coking coal mine south of Sydney.
Read MoreANZ Profit Slips, Flags More Asset Sales
As forecast by ShareCafe earlier this week, the ANZ Bank (ANZ) has cut its final dividend payout to shareholders on top of its lowered interim payout as the impact of rising bad debts and the slow revamp of its operations and move away from Asian retail banking takes hold.
Read MoreMedia Cuts As Huge Challenges Remain
The tide of job losses in the media is starting to assume tsunami-like proportions as deals fall over, revenues slow or vanish and even the apparently strongest of outlets and owners are forced to slash deeper and deeper into employment and other costs.
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