The market is down 8. The SFE Futures were down 6 this morning.

No Greek agreement with creditors over bond holding haircuts yet. The Dow Jones was up 97 with two thirds of the rise thanks to IBM but the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were both up just 0.1%. Our Futures down 6 this morning after a 25 point jump on Friday — talk that the Chairman of the IIF has left Greek talks with creditors in a sign that no agreement is imminent in contrast to the market rally last week on suggestions there would be a deal by the weekend. The National Bank of Greece has rallied for eight successive days as talks between Greek officials and private creditors entered a third day. Described now as a suckers rally. The IIF have said that they remain “hopeful and confident” of a deal that would prevent a full scale default when 14.4bn euro becomes payable on March 20th. Metals were mostly down on the LME, the Oil price fell $1.93 to $98.46 and Gold increased $9.50 to $1664.

Main points…

  • Origin Energy (ORG) says that Australia Pacific LNG, its JV with Conoco Philips and Sinopec, has signed binding agreements with Sinopec for them to pay US$1.1B for additional LNG supply and a further 10% equity interest. ORG up 5c to 1361c.
  • AWE Ltd. (AWE) are acquiring two oil blocks off Indonesia from Malaysia’s Genting Bhd., including an undeveloped discovery containing 76 million barrels of recoverable oil (est.). AWE will pay US$39m for full control of the blocks, and take on loans and receivables in the two companies which are parties to the production sharing contracts for approximately US$100m. AWE unchanged at 138c.
  • Lynas Corp (LYC) — is in a trading halt after being up 8.7% on Friday — They say Malaysia’s cabinet will release the final decision on whether they will permit LYC’s rare earths plant in Pahang after getting a recommendation from the local atomic energy agency. LYC unchanged at 128c.
  • St. Barbara (SBM) reiterated expectations for FY output to reach 320,000 and 350,000. They forecast a further rise in gold production in the 2nd half of the financial year. SBM up 6c to 213c.
  • Mirabela Nickel (MBN) has released quarterly production numbers. Patersons have described them as Neutral to Negative with production being slightly below expectations due to unseasonally high rainfall in Brazil. MBN down 6c to 124c.
  • Imdex Ltd (IMD) have released a Trading Update. Up 7c to 210c.
  • 22% of JB Hi-Fi (JBH) is sold short ahead of the results with a high level of “results risk” following a recent profit warnings and a trend of downgrades. JBH down 5c to 1193c.
  • Australia has its PPI numbers today — expect +0.4% to 0.6%. We have the more important CPI number on Wednesday with 0.2% expected and +0.6% underlying.

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