BPO TV

It was a turbulent session on Friday and week last week on Wall Street as investors digested signals that the Fed intends to continue raising interest rates for longer despite holding the U.S. cash rate at 5.25-5.5% at the September meeting. The Dow Jones fell 0.31% on Friday while the S&P500 and Nasdaq lost 0.23% and 0.09% respectively, marking a fourth consecutive day of losses on Wall St.

Bond yields also surged on Friday after the central bank forecasted one more rate hike for 2023, which further depleted the attractiveness of equities compared to bonds in the eye of investors.

Website building software company Squarespace rallied 5% on Friday after UBS initiated coverage of the company with a buy rating, while book and media publishing company Scholastic plummeted over 14% on missing earnings expectations on the top and bottom lines.

Over in Europe, investor sentiment in the region was dampened on Friday by signals of further rate hikes out of the Fed in the U.S. The STOXX600 fell 0.3% on Friday taking the week’s losses to 1.57%, while Germany’s DAX fell 0.09%, the French CAC lost 0.4% and, in the UK, the FTSE100 rose just 0.07% to close out the week. Higher for longer interest rates is also a fear of European investors from the ECB.

On Thursday last week, both the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of England ended their respective rate runs but said there is no room for complacency and will raise again if required.

Locally on Friday, the ASX rose just 0.05% to close the final trading session of the week in the green after a dull few days of trading. Real Estate stocks were the worst performers on Friday while the utilities and energy sectors led the gains on the market. Costa Group rose 6.5% on Friday after the agricultural company entered into a Scheme Implementation Agreement with a consortium led by PSP to acquire the remaining shares in Costa Group that the consortium does not already own at $3.20ps.

What to watch today:

• Ahead of the local trading session here in Australia the SPI future are anticipating the ASX to open the new trading week down 0.34%.
• On the commodities front this morning oil is trading 0.46% higher at US$90.44/barrel, gold is up 0.04% at US$1926/ounce and iron ore is up 1.65% at US$123.50/tonne.
• AU$1.00 is buying US$0.64, 95.55 Japanese Yen, 52.52 British Pence and NZ$1.08.
• Stocks trading ex-dividend today include Sigma Healthcare, Atlas Arteria and Auckland International Airport. If you’ve been thinking about these stocks it might be worth considering buying in today as stocks trading ex-dividend generally trade lower on the ex-dividend date.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter has decreased the 12-month price target on Develop Global (ASX:DVP) from $3.80 to $3.70 and maintain a buy rating on the hybrid mining company following the company’s release of an update on its Woodlawn operations. While the Mine Life of 7-years was in line with Bell Potter’s prior estimate and is expected to grow to 9-years, OPEX came in higher than Bell Potter expectations.
• And Trading Central has identified a bearish signal on Goodman Group (ASX:GMG) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 25-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may fall from the close of $21.70 to the range of $20.40 to $20.70 according to standard principles of technical analysis.