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US equities kicked off earnings week on a positive note, with all three major benchmarks making gains overnight, in fact, all three benchmarks closed 0.3% higher. US financials will be in focus this week with the Bank of America reporting tonight and Morgan Stanley reporting on Wednesday. Investors have been keeping a close eye on the banking sector after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last month.

European markets closed mixed. Germany’s Dax, France’s CAC and the STOXX 600 were all lower, while the FTSE 100 rose just 0.1% by the close.

What to watch today:

• The Australian market is set to open 0.23% lower this morning, according to the SPI futures.
• BHP’s (ASX:BHP) takeover of OZ Minerals (ASX:OZL) was approved yesterday and will be finalised in early May. In December last year, OZ Minerals announced that it had entered a Scheme Implementation Deed with BHP. The implementation date is May 2nd, when BHP will pay $26.50 per OZL share as the Scheme Consideration, and OZ Minerals will pay $1.75 per OZL share as a fully franked special dividend.
• In economic data, today the RBA’s meeting minutes will be released at 11:30am AEST, which will provide some insights into the meeting when the central bank decided to hold the cash rate steady for the first time in 10 months. And attention this week will be on China’s gross domestic product report on Tuesday and UK CPI numbers on Wednesday.
• In commodities,
  • The oil price is trading over 2% lower, as concerns mounted that further rate hikes from the Fed will hurt growth even more. However, also note that GDP growth data for China that is due to be released tomorrow, which should offer some relief for a fall in oil demand.
  • Gold is 0.4% lower as investors continue to assess the monetary policy outlook.
  • Iron ore is trading flat.
  • Auckland International Airport (ASX:AIA) and Hub24 (ASX:HUB) are set to release quarterly reports today, so keep watch of those share price movements today.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter have initiated coverage on Brickworks (ASX:BKW) with a buy rating. BKW is a building materials and property developer. Bell Potter says that on face value, the company looks reasonably priced relative to listed peers, however, a high presence of equity accounting masks what is relatively low-cost exposure to a residential housing recovery, with BKW’s core Building Products business trading at an approximately 11% discount to the peer group. Bell Potter’s price target is $27.00. At the stock’s current share price of $23.56, this implies 14.6% share price growth in a year.
• Trading Central have identified a bullish signal on Core Lithium (ASX:CXO) indicating that the stock price may rise from the close of $0.93 to the range of $1.12 to $1.16 over 17 days, according to the standard principles of technical analysis.