Skip to content

Wednesday, 1 August 2007

Morning Market Report

Marcus Padley, sharemarket analyst and author of the Marcus Today daily newsletter, reports:

The market is down a 106 over three times the 33 point fall the SFE Futures suggested this morning.

The Dow Jones was down 146 overnight moving from up 140 to down 140 after American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. announced they lack cash to fund new loans and that they couldn’t access their credit lines, their shares closed down 89%. The European markets were all up – when most of them closed Wall St was up about 100 points. The All Ords is down 1.7%.

The S&P/ASX 200 is now down 5% from its recent record high of 6422 reached on 24 July.

  • Trade deficit and retail sales numbers this morning have reduced the chance of a rate cut next week from 80% to 65%.
  • Alumina (AWC) is down 2.6% to 704c this morning on the back of their interim results.

· Macquarie Bank (MBL) was down a big 6.9% this morning on the back of news that investors in two of its high yield funds (marketed to small investors) are set to lose 25% of their money.

· Commonwealth Bank have bid for IWL Ltd –IWL are currently in a trading halt and last traded at 588c.

  • June retail sales are out, the market was expecting a 1% increase in retail sales, they are up 1.4%, stronger than expected. Ales are down 0.2% against forecasts for a 0.3% rise.
  • The Australian Trade numbers are out – the trade balance was expected to worsen to a deficit of $1.05bn, up from a $807m deficit in May but has come in at a much bigger than expected deficit of $1.75bn.
  • Babcock & Brown Capital (BCM) announced this morning they have acquired the Israeli Golden Pages for $248.1m.
  • Macmahon Holdings (MAH) said BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance has awarded them a $75m contract at.

Its all going oblong in the hedge fund/leveraged fund/subprime mortgage market/debt markets this morning with a host of issues appearing including trouble in Tokyo, Bear Stearns freezing redemptions on another fund, Basis Capital thought to be going bust, Macquarie Bank with its High Yield funds losing money. There will be more.

As the problems increase the likelihood of more problems appearing also increases – it is a lot easier to admit the truth if everyone else is….it makes it look like it wasn’t your fault. In MARCUS TODAY we have an article all about it entitled “Hitting the Fan”.

THE MORNING MARKET REPORT is provided by the MARCUS TODAY daily stockmarket newsletter. You can subscribe for a free five-day trial here.