The market is up 16 points. The Dow Jones was up 21 points to 15,783. The market traded in a narrow 55 point range for most of the day after an initial rise. Volumes were down due to Veterans Day holiday and the bond market was closed.

The S&P was up one to 1772.

Oil rose 0.48%to US$95.08.

Gold was down US$2.30 to US$1282.30 per ounce.

The US$ rose against most major currencies and the Aussie dollar continued to drift lower, currently trading at US$0.9357.

VIX volatility index fell 2.87% to 12.53.

European share generally stronger — The UK FTSE rose 0.30% and the German DAX and French CAC rose 0.33% and 0.77% respectively.

European bonds were stronger. The exception was the UK 10 year bond, whose yield rose four basis points.

Base metal prices were weaker — led by nickel down 1.21%. Copper was flat.

Iron ore was unchanged at US$135.90 a tonne.

STORIES

  • Chinese GDP downgrade — Talk that the Chinese will downgrade its government growth forecast to a more sustainable 7%.
  • Incitec Pivot (IPL) — Up 5% first thing on results.
  • News Corp (NNC) — Down 3% first thing on quarterly results.
  • REA Group (REA) — Part of the NNC quarterly result is the REA quarterly numbers (News Limited owns 58%) — REA is up 5% on the numbers.
  • Warrnambool Cheese & Butter (WCB) — The Treasurer approves the Saputo bid and WCB have put a target statement recommending Saputo’s bid despite Fonterra paying 925c on market recently. The foreign bid is very unpopular with the dairy farmers that supply WCB.
  • NAB Limited (NAB) has issued a $750 million convertible Note offer.
  • Unilife (UNS) up 5% on results.
  • Bathurst Resources NZ (BRL) up 23% on a mining project agreement.
  • Asciano (AIO) up 2.7% on its AGM.
  • SP Ausnet (SPN) up 1% on results.
  • Pacific Brands (PBG) — A Director of Pacific Brands just bought 20,000 shares having held none before.
  • M2 Telecommunications (MTU) — Has an investor day today.
  • Brickworks (BKW) — No surprise here, the “Independent” Non-Executive Directors of BKW tell shareholders to reject the value releasing proposal from Perpetual and Carnegie.
  • NewsCorp (NWS) — First quarter earnings release — Reported a profit of $US38 million for the first quarter. The result is an improvement on the $US83 million loss for the same period last year. The company said the improvement was mainly due to contributions from the Fox Sports Australia TV network it recently acquired and lower costs in its newspaper division. Revenues were down 3% to $US2.07 billion. The newspaper division contributed $US1.49 billion of this revenue. The Australian newspapers were down 12% in ad revenues. Newspaper circulation and subscription revenues were down 6% for the quarter, due to lower print volume and a decline in institutional revenues at its Dow Jones business.
  • Elders (ELD) — Rural services company Elders closed down 14.8% yesterday after saying it expects to report a loss of more than $500 million for its recently concluded fiscal year. Elders had expected to post a loss of $303 million. The company is due to release its full year result on November 18. It had previously announced plans to cut 150 jobs to help transform the business and reduce debt. The cost cutting drive is aiming to reduce costs by more than $25 million from April 2014.