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Market Opener – 29 May 2019

 
Local Markets Commentary
The Australian market commences mid-week trade on generally negative overnight international equities and mixed key commodities trade.

Markets in the US and UK had traded for their first regular sessions of the week.

In overnight commodities trade, WTI crude gained.

US gold futures (June) declined.

LME copper settled slightly higher. Nickel fell. Aluminium recorded a modest rise.

The $A effectively trod water after trading at ~US69.25c early yesterday evening. 

Locally today, new home sales figures are scheduled for release at 11am AEST, ahead of a raft of closely-watched indicators due over the next several days prior to next week’s Reserve Bank of Australia policy meeting.

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Overseas Market Commentary
US equities markets lost opening gains overnight, steadily trending lower to settle at or near session lows. Major European indices chopped and swung markedly.

The US president had on Monday reversed pre-holiday weekend remarks, suggesting any trade agreement would be a while coming, and spoke of a possible ‘substantial’ rise in import taxes for goods from China.

Among US data releases, two March house price indices were reported, one rising 0.1% for the month and the Case-Shiller index by 0.7%. Year-on-year, Case-Shiller sample city prices had risen 2.7%.

The Conference Board May consumer confidence reading meanwhile rose five points to 134.1.

The Dallas Fed’s (Texas region) manufacturing index dropped to -5.3 from two.

In the euro zone, a business climate index fell from 0.42 to 0.30.

An economic sentiment index rose by 1.2 to 105.1, however.

A final May consumer confidence reading confirmed an improvement to -6.5 from -7.3.

In Germany, GfK’s consumer confidence index slipped 0.1 to 10.1.

April import prices rose 0.3% for the month following no change in March. Year-on-year, prices came in 1.4% higher, against 1.7% for March.

Tonight in the US, another regional manufacturing index and weekly mortgage applications are due.

Companies scheduled to report earnings include: Abercrombie & Fitch, Bank of Montreal, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Palo Alto Networks.
 
Posted on 29/05/2019 8:00:00 AM

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