16th March 2023
Morning Bell - Grady Wulff
The local market rallied 0.86% yesterday as investors regained confidence was restored by a rally on Wall Street on Tuesday. Information technology stocks led the local rally yesterday, while energy stocks were sold off amid a decline in commodity prices. The best performing stocks on the local index yesterday were led by Pexa Group (ASX:PXA) jumping over 6.4%, Link Administration Holdings (ASX:LNK) rallying almost 6% and Coronado Global Resources (ASX:CRN) lifting 5.44%. On the losing end of the market, Imugene (ASX:IMU) fell 4%, Evolution Mining (ASX:EVN) shed 3.2% and Lovisa (ASX:LOV) lost 3.05%.
Wall Street took a dive on Wednesday amid further turbulence in the banking sector as leading bank Credit Suisse said earlier this week that it has found “certain material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting for 2021 and 2022”. The concerns out of Credit Suisse prompted the Swiss regulator to say it would give the country’s central bank Credit Suisse liquidity if necessary. Credit Suisse shares closed the midweek session down over 24%. Stocks recovered some ground in afternoon trade but the Dow Jones ended the day down 0.87%, and the S&P500 lost 0.7% but the tech-heavy Nasdaq actually rose 0.05% on Wednesday. US retail sales data out overnight also showed retail spend dropped 0.4% in February as consumers pulled back in spending amid rising interest rates and higher cost of living pressures. Consumers spent less on restaurants and department stores and more on staples goods retail. The Credit Suisse saga is the latest in the global financial sector turmoil following two U.S. banks collapsing earlier this week.
Over in Europe, markets had their worst session since Russia initiated war with Ukraine back in February 2022, as investors responded to the concerns out of banking giant Credit Suisse. The bank dropped to the bottom of the blue-chip index after its biggest lender, the Saudi National bank said it would not be able to offer it more financial help. The STOXX600 closed over 3% lower, Germany’s DAX fell 3.27%, the French CAC lost 3.58%, and in the UK, the FTSE100 tumbled 3.83%.
What to watch today:
- On the commodities front crude oil has tumbled over 4% overnight to trade at US$68.43/barrel amid the turmoil across the global banking sector. Gold is trading 0.81% higher at US$1917/ounce and iron ore is up 0.4% at US$133.50/tonne.
- The Aussie dollar is buying US$0.66, 88.20 Japanese yen, 55.03 British pence and NZ$1.07.
- Ahead of the local trading session the SPI futures are anticipating the ASX to open 1.68% lower on the back of the global turbulence overnight.
- Stocks going ex-dividend today include IGO (ASX:IGO), Data#3 Limited (ASX:DTL), Regis Healthcare (ASX:REG), and Embelton (ASX:EMB). 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:
- Trading Central has identified a bullish signal on DGL Group (ASX:DGL) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 10-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may rise from the close of $1.83 to the range of $2.12 to $2.18 according to standard principles of technical analysis.
- Trading Central has identified a bearish signal on SRG Global (ASX:SRG) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 30-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may fall from the close of $0.71 to the range of $0.64 to $0.66 according to standard principles of technical analysis.