ASX added about a per cent today after the US Fed kept rates on hold — as it happened
An Emergency Warning has been issued for parts of southern part of Serpentine and the northern part of the Shire of Murray in Western Australia. For the latest, search on ABC Emergency
The ASX rode the wave of a Wall Street rally today, ending a per cent higher, after the US Federal Reserve left interest rates on hold for a second straight meeting.
Traders bet the next move will be a cut, sometime next year.
Meantime, as we wait for an interest rate decision here on Tuesday, new data shows investors are leading a rebound in lending, while finance for new homes is at a 20-year-low.
Take a look back at how the day's financial news unfolded.
Disclaimer: this blog is not intended as investment advice.
By Rachel Pupazzoni
ASX 200: +0.9% to 6,899 points
Australian dollar: +0.5% to 64.23 US cents
S&P 500: +1.1% to 4,238 points
Nasdaq: +1.6% to 13,061 points
FTSE: +0.3% to 7,342 points
EuroStoxx: +0.7% to 437 points
Spot gold: +0.2% to $US1,985/ounce
Brent crude: +0.9% to $US85.41/barrel
Iron ore: +1.4% to $US120.90/tonne
Bitcoin: flat at $US35,493
US 10-year bond: -16bps to 4.71%
Live updates on the major ASX indices:
By Rachel Pupazzoni
Well team, it's been a pleasure, but with the market now closed, my work here on the live markets blog is done.
How are you feeling ahead of the Reserve Bank board meeting next week?
The probability of a hike – according to Refinitive's poll of analysts – is 56.6 per cent.
That's pretty close to 50:50 either way. Let's see if that number changes between now and 2.29pm on Tuesday.
The RBA governor Michele Bullock will let us know at 2.30pm on Melbourne Cup day if we're in for another increase or not.
It's been a pleasure keeping you company here today.
Do come back tomorrow – when my colleagues Emilia Terzon and Kate Ainsworth take you through the day's business and finance news.
I'll be back in the TV studio tomorrow putting together Close of Business.
By Rachel Pupazzoni
For more of your business and finance fix, here's a look at what's on the show tonight.
You can watch the program on the ABC News Channel at 8.45pm AEDT, after the late news on ABC TV or any time on ABC iView.
By Rachel Pupazzoni
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) investigation has found technology, system and procedural failures at the retailer meant it sent more than 200,000 marketing emails to people who had already unsubscribed.
The blunder has cost Kmart $1.3m.
The retailer breached spam laws for nearly a year between July 2022 and May 2023, according to ACMA.
It's not the only one – the Commonwealth Bank was hit with a record $3.5 million fine for spam earlier this year.
Read more on this below.
By Rachel Pupazzoni
The constant numbers flashing away on my computer screen have stopped for another day, with trading on the ASX now ended.
The top 200 added just shy of a per cent to end the day at 6,899 points, while the All Ordinaries put on a clean one per cent to finish at 7,095 points.
Both indices are just shy of two per cent lower so far this year.
Will they rally in the final two months of 2023?
Here's how the top and bottom looked.
Biggest gains:
Biggest losses:
By Rachel Pupazzoni
Most sectors had a positive session today.
Here's how it looked in the final minutes of trade.
By Rachel Pupazzoni
The Federal Court has granted an interim injunction that prevents Santos from starting work on a gas pipeline in waters of Northern Australia.
The order means work to lay the Barossa gas export pipeline can't start.
The order comes after group Environmental Defenders Office, on behalf of Indigenous groups, urged the injunction.
The indigenous group on the Tiwi Islands allege the pipeline would impact their cultural heritage.
Santos says an independent anthropologist concluded there were no underwater cultural heritage places.
You can read more about the issue in the article by colleague Emilia Terzon that I've posted below.
The court will sit again on November 13 to determine whether to extend the injunction.
Santos shares are 2.3% lower today.
By Rachel Pupazzoni
The best performer on the ASX 200 today is lithium producer Sayona Mining.
The company is listed here, but most of its assets are in Canada.
Today, it announced to the ASX it has found multiple high-grade lithium intercepts from a recent round of drilling at its North American Lithium (NAL) project in Quebec.
Quick explainer for anyone who's not familiar with mining: When companies have a site of land they want to explore to find out what they have in the ground and how good it is, they send gigantic drills hundreds of metres — even up to a thousand — into the earth to retrieve drill or core samples. The drills churn out long poles of earth, that are then cut up into smaller pieces and assessed for their quality of whatever the mineral the company is looking for.
So the team at Sayona have assessed the results of 57 drill holes (giving them 14.3km worth of sample to look at!) and they like what they see.
The boss of Sayona, James Brown said in a statement to the stock exchange that the results mean a potential upgrade of what they have at their site.
"Some of the intercepts from this recent drilling program are thicker and higher grade than any previously encountered, increasing confidence in NAL's mine life."
I'll just add here, the company's share price is significantly lower than the start of the year – it was about $0.30 at the end of January – so it's still a long way off that figure.
Today it's worth about $0.08 a share.
By Rachel Pupazzoni
Shares in Origin keep edging lower today.
They're off more than six per cent to about $8.50 a share.
That's after a Brookfield and EIG-led consortium increased their offer to about $9.53 a share for the Australian energy producer.
The bidders say it's an 8% increase on their previous offer of $8.81 and a 70% premium to Origin's share price a year ago, before the takeover speculation began.
The bid was increased after some major shareholders had indicated they would reject the previous offer.
Origin's board is recommending shareholders vote in favour of the deal.
But Origin's largest shareholder, AustralianSuper, says the offer remains "substantially below" its estimate of Origin's long-term value.
AustralianSuper manages $300bn in assets.
Analysts say if AustralianSuper says no, the deal needs work.
"If Australian Super is rejecting it, the likelihood of the deal going ahead is very low," said Jamie Hannah, deputy head of investments and capital markets at VanEck, which owns a 0.3 per cent stake in Origin.
"I think the deal is back at the drawing board at the moment."
By Rachel Pupazzoni
It looks like the top 200 has pared back slightly this afternoon – it's just over one per cent in front at 6,910 points.
Here are the top and bottom stocks
Biggest gains:
Biggest losses:
By Rachel Pupazzoni
Speaking of property, last night on The Business I took a look at the latest CoreLogic Home Value Index – aka national house price data.
Nationally the price we're paying for a home rose 0.9 per cent in October – but with another interest rate hike potentially days away, we might start to see a slowdown.
Have a look at my story below for more.
By Rachel Pupazzoni
There were 4,282 loans issued for the construction or purchase of new homes in September, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Lending in that category over the past three months is 27.7per cent lower than the same quarter last year.
The Housing Industry Association's senior economist, Tom Devitt blames the Reserve Bank's interest rate hiking cycle.
"Lending activity has been weighed down by the fastest increase in interest rates in a generation. This is drying up the pipeline of new home building work across the country."
He warns it means there will be fewer new housing starts next year.
"There are very long lags in this cycle due to the record high volume of building work that was in the pipeline when the RBA first raised rates in May 2022. The volume of houses under construction only started declining in the June quarter of 2023, and remains elevated, a year after the first increase in the cash rate.
"This large volume of building work has obscured the impact of these rate rises on the broader economy, especially unemployment, as the building industry employs over one million Australians."
Mr Devitt ended with this warning:
"This slowdown in lending for new housing will make it increasingly difficult to reach the Australian government's target of building 1.2 million new homes in five years."
By Rachel Pupazzoni
Coles and Woolworths have been accused of "cashing in during a cost-of-living crisis" by consumer group CHOICE.
They've released their annual Shonky Awards and chief executive Alan Kirkland says the supermarket duopoly have been confusing customers, while posting huge profits.
"Frequent changes in prices mean it's hard to tell if you're even getting a genuine discount. They are well and truly deserving of a Shonky award."
Here's the ABC News article if you want to read more.
By Michael Janda
One last post from me before I sign off and completely hand over to Rach to take you through to the market close.
Trade numbers for September are out from the ABS and there's both bad and good news in the numbers.
The bad news is that Australia's trade surplus dropped by nearly $3.4 billion to just shy of $6.8 billion. That's the lowest it's been since March 2021.
The good news is that Australia is still posting an historically large trade surplus, and also that the reason it shrank is not so much to do with a fall in exports, which were down just 1.4%, but rather a surge in imports (up 7.5%).
The good news on imports is twofold.
First, it shows demand for goods hasn't completely collapsed — although the 0.3% rise for consumption goods is pretty tiny when you consider how much inflation is pushing up prices, so the volume of consumer goods imports must surely have fallen.
The better news is that imports were driven higher by a 23.3% jump in capital goods coming into the country, mainly industrial transport equipment.
That is hopefully a sign that businesses are following through with investment plans, and capital goods imports should (in theory at least) be productivity enhancing.
But there is another bit of bad news in the data, about what it might mean for Australia's economic growth as measured by GDP and whether we can avoid a technical recession.
This from Marcel Thieliant, head of Asia-Pacific at Capital Economics.
"The slump in the trade balance in September increases the risk that the Australian economy entered a recession in the third quarter, but we suspect that a large drag from net trade will have been offset by stock building and a modest rise in domestic demand," he writes.
"We now estimate that net trade knocked off 1.5%-pts from Q3 GDP growth, which would be one of the largest drags from net exports ever recorded.
"But we suspect that will be mostly offset by a reversal of the unusually large 1.1%-pts drag from inventories in the second quarter.
"So while today's data increase the risk that the recession we expect to start this quarter already begun last quarter, we suspect that the economy will have continued to expand in Q3."
Of course, in per person terms, Australia is already in a recession, with GDP per capita having fallen 0.3% in both of the first two quarters this calendar year.
By Rachel Pupazzoni
There's a lot of green on the ASX sector heatmap today.
With nine of the 11 sectors higher, it makes for a calming visual aid.
Information technology is the best performing sector — it's up 3.28 per cent today and is 2.71 per cent higher across the past five days.
By Rachel Pupazzoni
As I dive in for the afternoon, it's nice to see the ASX is trading higher — it really has been in the doldrums of late.
As Michael pointed out earlier, we've been led higher by Wall Street — you can see that in the snapshot above.
The heavyweight mining and financial sectors are among the top performing stocks.
But in saying that — nine of the 11 sectors are up today.
Biggest gains:
Biggest losses:
By Rachel Pupazzoni
Hi readers!
It's me, Rachel Pupazzoni.
I'll take you through the afternoon here on the live markets blog.
No-one comes close to Michael Janda when it comes to great business and economics analysis — but I'll do my best.
I've seen a few of you have sent through comments this morning — keep them coming. We love hearing from you.
I'll be back with a market update shortly.
By Michael Janda
A 2 per cent jump in the value of home loans being taken out by property investors drove lending growth in September.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that loans to owner-occupiers fell 0.1 per cent over the same period.
The ABS observed that the value of new investor loan commitments increased across most states and territories this month, driven by rises in Victoria ($127m) and New South Wales ($77m).
"Since February 2023, the value of new housing loan commitments have trended upwards, with total growth in investor loans exceeding owner-occupier loans," observed the ABS head of finance statistics Mish Tan.
"That said, the total value of new housing loan commitments in recent months remains below the all‑time highs seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic."
There was a slight (0.5%) uptick in the number of loans taken out by first home buyers, but this segment of the market remained smaller than last year and well off COVID stimulus induced peaks.
By Michael Janda
Does anyone else have daily issues accessing the RBA website? For our national bank the website seems remarkably unstable
– Jasmine
Hi Jasmine, I have to say that I have had no tech troubles accessing rba.gov.au, so maybe it's something to do with your browser settings or cache?
By Michael Janda
A Brookfield and EIG led consortium have come back with a higher takeover offer for Australian energy producer Origin.
The new offer is pitched at a total of approximately $9.53 per share (depending on exchange rate movements) and is the bidder's "best and final" offer.
The bidders say it's an 8% increase on their previous offer of $8.81 and a 70% premium to Origin's share price a year ago, before the takeover speculation began.
The bid was increased after some major shareholders had indicated they would reject the previous offer.
Origin's board is recommending shareholders vote in favour of the deal.
"We are pleased to have agreed with the Consortium a significant increase in the cash consideration, reflecting the value of Origin's assets, people, and the company's strategic positioning for the energy transition," wrote Origin chair Scott Perkins.
"The revised consideration is now above the top end of the Independent Expert's 30 June 2023 valuation range, allowing all shareholders to receive a certain cash value for their Origin shares. We encourage all shareholders to vote in favour of the Scheme."
The revised offer clearly hasn't pleased all current investors, with some choosing to sell out today, pushing Origin's share price down 1.8% to $8.91.
Shareholders will vote on the deal at a meeting on November 23.
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