The market is up 19. The SFE Futures were up 30 this morning.

The Dow Jones closed up 102 overnight and was 209 at best. Slovakia’s parliament agreed to changes to the euro zone’s EFSF rescue fund. European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said on Wednesday that banks “urgently” need to recapitalise to weather the sovereign debt storm. Metals were mostly up on the LME. The gold price up $15.00 to $1676. The oil price fell 87¢ to $84.94. The Aussie Dollar up at 102.16¢ from 99.20¢ yesterday.

  • The unemployment rate fell unexpectedly in September to 5.2%, down from 5.3% in August. There were 10,800 more full time jobs and 9,600 more part-time jobs. Analysts had expected a rise of 10,000 jobs. The Australian dollar is up against the USD on the news – now buying 102.16¢, up from 101.51¢ this morning.
  • Bank of Queensland’s (BOQ) full-year profit fell 14% to $158.7m from $179.6m a year earlier as bad debts almost doubled. Bad debts jumped 92% from a year earlier to $200.5 million as a ‘‘result of one-off commercial deals, the current economic conditions, and extreme weather events of early 2011”. BoQ said the rise in bad debts were temporary with underlying cash profit rising 18%. Declared a final dividend of 28 cents per share.  BOQ up 1.1% to 808¢.
  • Iluka Resources (ILU) 3rd quarter production was up almost 10% on the same period a year ago. ILU reaffirmed the higher full year 2011 sales volumes announced in July. ILU said customers in China are cautious about future demand for zircon, with “Policy changes aimed at tightening credit and dampening property speculation…has led to some customer caution regarding future demand commitments”. JB Were described the result as solid. ILU up 6.1% recovering recent falls.
  • PanAust (PNA) reported September quarter production results that were lower than expected. They also downgraded guidance for FY2011 due to rain events in July. JB Production was lower and costs higher than forecast due to extreme rainfall in early July even when taking into account the operation at Phu Kham being impacted by extreme rainfall in late June and early July.  PNA up 1.9% to 317¢.
  • The ACCC, in a draft decision, has indicated that it will grant authorisation for the Virgin Australia (VBA) and Singapore Airlines partnership. ACCC chairman Rod Sims said that “The ACCC also considers that the alliance is likely to make Virgin Australia more competitive with other airlines, including Qantas (QAN)”. VBA up 1.6%, QAN up 0.3%.
  • RIO 3rd Q production numbers are due this afternoon.
  • Results in the US tonight include: JP Morgan Chase, Safeway, Google.
  • Quote from the Newsletter today – “We came very close today to opening new trades in the banks with results coming up – to capture the dividends – and in some of the bombed out retailers for a continued bounce in the market and an expected interest rate cut on November 1st as well as for the well received JBH AGM comments yesterday.” Find out why we didn’t…

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