Look to another slight gain at open through early morning Thursday trade, with ASX 200 futures tipping a 0.1% gain to around 8,541 points.
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Our Aussie rise comes at odds with U.S. moves – a rare divide these days – after faster-than-expected consumer prices worried Wall Street investors a little.
Top U.S. indices dipped on the hesitation (many have read the new consumer data as meaning the Federal Reserve won’t cut again any time soon) with the Dow Jones and S&P 500 tracking small declines for the first time this week.
Conversely, the U.S. 10-year note rallied as much as 10 basis points overnight.
One of the reasons for the split between the oft-leading U.S. bourse and our local Oz markets is the fact we’re knee-deep in reporting season; it all continues today.
In fact, there’s a pile of companies who had February 13 booked for release: Downer (ASX:DOW), HomeCo Daily Needs (ASX:HDN), South32 (ASX:S32), Northern Star (ASX:NST), Origin Energy (ASX:ORG), Temple & Webster (ASX:TPW), Orora (ASX:ORA), and Treasury Wine Estates (ASX:TWE) all report today.
They may find themselves overshadowed somewhat by the big backdoor IPO we’ve all been waiting for though – Chemist Warehouse joins the bourse today through its $34 billion Sigma Healthcare (ASX:SIG) merger.
The biggest thing to watch is if un-escrowed franchisees Jack and Sam Gance and Mario Verrocchi, who hold around 49% of the shares, sell out or hold.
Early predictions tip the Chemist Warehouse-Sigma entity to soon be worth $30B.
In other company news, IAG (ASX:IAG), who owns NRMA Insurance, has this morning reported a 91% jump in net profits, to $778 million.
Looking at forex, the Aussie dollar is buying 62.8 US cents.
To commodities, which are in the greenback,
Iron Ore has jumped again, to $107.80 a tonne in Singapore,
Brent Crude is trading at $75,
Gold has stayed strong at $2,909 per ounce, and,
US natgas futures are at $3.54 per gigajoule.
That’s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre, stick with us for HotCopper’s Market Update.
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