The market is down 12. The SFE Futures were up 3 this morning.

In the second lowest volume of trade this year Wall Street closed down 5 overnight having been down as much as 68 earlier in the session on the back of higher than expected initial jobless. The monthly unemployment numbers, to be released tonight, are expected to show a 65,000 drop in job numbers and a rise of 9.6% in the unemployment rate from 9.5%. The oil price fell 46c to $82.01, Gold put on $3.40 to $1199.30 and the Aussie dollar fell to 91.51c from 91.67c. The ECB left rates on hold and Jean-Claude Trichet said Europe is recovering faster than expected.

In other news…

  • Rio Tinto (RIO) released their interim result after market yesterday. The numbers came in slightly ahead of expectations. Analysts have described the result as ‘strong’. 1st H net profit came in at $US5.85bn. Analysts on average expected $US5.5bn. The headlines this morning said “RIO profit roars”. Despite that RIO is down 23c to 7278c.
  • The RBA’s Quarterly Statement on monetary policy says they are comfortable with the outlook and the current cash rate. They left forecasts basically unchanged and warn inflation hasn’t disappeared.
  • Boral (BLD) has successfully completed the retail component of their accelerated renounceable entitlement offer. The clearing price was 425c. BLD last traded at 435c.
  • The soon to be listed Aston Resources IPO has had to be re-priced some 27% lower — the offer price was cut to 596c from 820c a share after a weak institutional bookbuild over the last two days. This lack of traction we have seen for IPOs (QCopper $200m and Valemus $1.3Bn IPOs both pulled this year) is a reflection of the lack of confidence, volatility and risk in the market at the moment and confirms the institutional fund manager perception of a sideways rather than bull market.
  • Servcorp (SRV) says they will meet their net profit guidance for the year of $24m. SRV up 12% to 300c
  • ConnectEast (CEU) reports average daily revenue of $592,076 in July 2010, up 14.1% on last year. CEU up 0.5c to 40c
  • Australian wheat exports fell 19% in June to 1.16m metric tons, and are down 29% from last year.
  • Reporting season really cranks up next week with over 40 companies reporting. Some of the bigger names include: JB Hi-FI (Monday), Cochlear (Tuesday), Commonwealth Bank and Stockland (Wednesday) and Qantas and Telstra (Thursday).
  • Stock hitting fresh yearly highs today include: Andean Resources (AND), takeover target Aevum, Lynas Corp, Sandfire Resources. Kathmandu continues to hit fresh yearly lows, as does Wilson HTM.

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