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The Australian market reversed early gains on Wednesday to close the midweek session 0.5% lower, as investor concerns over the RBA further tightening Australia’s monetary policy were enhanced after stronger-than-expected retail sales were reported for August, up 0.6% to $34.88 billion. The higher-than-expected retail sales support the case for the RBA to raise interest rates by another 0.5% at the next meeting on Tuesday. Tech stocks took the biggest hit on Tuesday, declining 1.6% as a sector while Utilities rose almost 2%.

The winning stocks for the midweek session were Coronado Global Resources (ASX:CRN), which added 5.9%, while Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS) jumped 5.4% and Whitehaven Coal (ASX:WHC) extended its rally, adding another 3.9%. On the losing end of the market, Telix Pharmaceuticals (ASX:TLX) plunged 15.40% after the biopharmaceutical company announced a big blow to its global expansion with the company withdrawing its Marketing Authorisation Application for its Illucix drug in Europe based on regulators requesting additional Chemistry, Manufacturing and Control data which Telix says cannot be delivered within the prescribed review timeframe. Investors also sold out of Core Lithium (ASX:CXO) shares yesterday as investors may be taking profit from the company’s surge of 175% over the last year.

Imugene rounded out the bottom three stocks for Wednesday, ending the day down 5.3%.

The most traded stocks by Bell Direct clients yesterday were the BetaShares Geared Australian Equity (Hedge Fund) (ASX:GEAR), Silver Lake Resources (ASX:SLR) and South32 (ASX:S32).

Overseas, it was a positive day across most major markets following a move by the Bank of England to put a floor on UK assets overnight. The BoE is stepping in to buy $65 billion pounds of sterling bonds to stabilise the UK bond market, with investors confident that the UK government can pay back their debt, after the new government’s tax cut promise triggered the biggest sell-off in decades. The FTSE100 ended the midweek session up 0.3%. Over in New York the three key indices posted strong gains on Wednesday amid the recovery in the British pound, while retail investors remain interested in Apple and Tesla shares. The Nasdaq posted the greatest gain of 2.05%, while every sector of the S&P500 closed higher with the index adding 1.97%, and the Dow Jones rallied 1.88%.

Germany’s DAX and the French CAC also followed suit, each adding 0.36% and 0.19% respectively. The European Union is proposing a new set of sanctions against Russia. The package would affect $7 billion Euros of Russian exports and would ban the sale of new technologies to Russia and they’d also start paving the way for an international price cap on Russian oil.

What to watch today:

• Commodities have sharply rebounded overnight following the European Union’s proposed new sanctions on Russia, with the price of Crude oil rocketing 4.31%, while Brent is up 3.21% at US$89.04 per barrel, Natural gas is 3.31% higher and gold is up almost 2% at US$1660.50 per ounce.
• Ahead of the local trading day, ASX futures are anticipating the market to bounce back from its red-close on Wednesday to trade sharply higher by 1.52% at the opening bell on Thursday amid boosted sentiment in markets around the world.
• The stocks trading ex-dividend today are Link Administration Holdings (ASX:LNK), Sigma Healthcare (ASX:SIG), and Energy One (ASX:EOL), which could be a good opportunity to buy in if you have been thinking about these stocks as stocks going ex-dividend generally trade lower on the ex-dividend date.
• On the economic data front, today there is no local data released however investors will be awaiting the release of US initial weekly jobless claims to gain insight into America’s tight labour market. A number of Fed officials also deliver speeches today which could sway investment decisions on Thursday in the US pending how hawkish the comments are toward further interest rate hikes.

Trading Ideas:

• Trading Central has identified a bullish signal on Medibank Private (ASX:MPL) following the formation of a pattern over a 276 day period which is roughly the amount of time the share price may rise from the close of $3.49 to the range of $4.20 to $4.35 according to standard principles of technical analysis.
• Trading Central has identified a bearish signal on Viva Energy (ASX:VEA) following the formation of a pattern over a 70 day period which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may fall from the close of $2.50 to the range of $1.98 to $2.08 according to standard principles of technical analysis.