Local shares poised to open flat on a weak lead from overseas markets after the European Central Bank disappointed investors with no new plans for fresh stimulus measures, while iron ore surged by nearly 3 per cent.
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What you need2know:
• SPI futures up 6 pts at 5378
• AUD at 83.79 US cents, 100.45 Japanese yen, 67.78 Euro cents and 53.48 British pence
• Late on Wall St, S&P 500 flat, Dow flat, Nasdaq +0.1%
• In Europe, Euro Stoxx 50 -1.7%, FTSE -0.6%, CAC -1.6%, DAX -1.2%
• Iron ore jumps 2.9% to $US71.25 per metric tonne
• Spot gold slips 0.1% to $US1208.39 an ounce
• Brent oil down 0.3% to $US69.70 per barrel
What’s on today
Australia arrivals and departures, Ai Group performance of construction index; Japan leading indicators; US non-farm payrolls for November; Germany factory orders; China foreign currency reserves.
Stocks to watch
Rio Tinto is not looking to make any major acquisition to protect itself from a potential Glencore takeover, chief executive Sam Walsh said at a meeting with investors in London.
AGM's for Premier Investments and Washington H Soul Pattinson
Origin CEO Grant King to provide company update and discuss energy sector at American Chamber of Commerce in Australia event.
Macquarie Wealth Management maintains an “underperform” on Caltex Australia and a 12-month price target of $23 a share after it reported strong refining margins and sales for October.
Currencies
The European Central Bank’s Governing Council expects to consider a proposal for broad-based asset purchases including sovereign debt next month, two sources said.
The lack of any concrete stimulus news after Thursday's council meeting in Frankfurt helped the euro rebound and bond yields in the euro zone bounce off record lows. The euro gained 0.61 per cent against the US dollar to $1.2385, after slipping to a more than two-year trough of $US1.2284. The dollar last traded at 119.79 yen, up 0.01 per cent on the day.
German 10-year yields, the benchmark for euro zone borrowing costs, rose 3 basis points to 0.77 per cent, retreating further from record lows of 0.698 per cent on Monday.
Commodities
Brent crude oil fell after Saudi Arabia announced deep cuts in selling prices for Asian and US buyers, a week after refusing to support OPEC output cuts.
More than 30 economists and analysts polled by Reuters after OPEC's November 27 meeting forecast an average Brent price of $US82.50 a barrel in 2015, down $US11.20 from the previous poll. This was the biggest downgrade in average forecasts since the global economic crisis in 2008.
A fire earlier this week at an ore concentrator at Mongolia’s Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine is being investigated, Tony Shaffer, a spokesman for Turquoise Hill Resources, which co-owns the facility, said in an email. He declined to comment on the impact on production. The concentrator is a machine that separates waste rock from copper.
United States
US stocks were little changed on Thursday afternoon, bouncing from initial losses after European Central Bank president Mario Draghi brushed off pressure for more immediate monetary policy action.
Energy sector stocks were the largest weight on the S&P 500 with a 0.5 per cent drop that follows three days of gains in which they advanced 3.2 per cent. The sector is down 7.8 per cent year-to-date as crude oil prices tumbled.
The government’s non-farm payrolls report for November is due Friday and expectations are that the US economy created 230,000 jobs last month.
Europe
European shares sank on Thursday after the European Central Bank stuck to its line that it will decide early next year whether further measures are needed to boost the euro zone economy, sparking a bout of profit-taking.
ECB president Mario Draghi said the bank would reassess the impact of its recent policy measures early in 2015, though not necessarily in January, and take further action - including such quantitative easing - if needed.
"The markets were simply disappointed that the job of fighting deflation had been passed off to next year," said market analyst Craig Erlam at trading group Alpari. "We may not have expected QE today but the least we wanted was a strong sign that it is to come and Draghi was very non-committal."
What happened yesterday
Banks and miners have led the Australian sharemarket higher for the third straight session on Thursday, while selected energy stocks are no longer rallying but suffering fallout from the recent plunge in the oil price.
The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 added 47 points, 0.9 per cent, to 5368.8.
