Our market is down 39. The SFE Futures were down 27 this morning.

Wall Street closed down 26 overnight. The two-day rally including a 271-point rally in the Dow from bottom to top ends … but not decisively. The Dow was up 10 at best and down 65 at worst overnight. The oil price finished slightly higher — 10c to $76.94 — and but gold lost $6 to $1112. The Aussie dollar fell to 88.25c compared to 88.61c yesterday morning.

It is a busy day on the news front…

  • Karoon Gas Australia (KAR) down a big 14.41% to 570c after announcing the Poseidon-2 well found gas but the flow rates are not particularly inspiring. Seems as if the market is losing patience. The price was 1106c on January 8.
  • CSR Ltd (CSR) has had its demerger plan knocked back by the Federal Court as being likely to disadvantage victims of asbestos poisoning … this is despite working with ASIC for a month. CSR down 6.5% to 170c.
  • Myer Ltd (MYR) has announced flat 2Q sales numbers up 1.2% like-for-like in what they described as a “very challenging” pre-Christmas period. They were expected to announce like-for-like sales growth of 2.5%. On the plus side they have upgraded H1 EBIT guidance. They expect 1H EBIT to increase by more than 10% from last year, above prospectus guidance of 5.6% growth. Price down 2% first thing. MYR down 4.7% to 322c. Patersons upgrade from HOLD to BUY.
  • Tabcorp Holdings (TAH) has announced a better-than-expected 1H result. Normalised net profit came in at $264 million, above the $252.5 million the analysts expected. Management hasn’t given guidance for the rest of FY10 because of the major regulatory review case taking place into racefield fees ongoing. TAH down 6c to 699c.
  • ARB Corp (ARP) doing well after a profit upgrade — up 4% to 520c — they say that based on unaudited management accounts, sales revenue increased by 15.5% and net profit before tax is expected to be about $21 million.
  • Asciano (AIO) has struck another long-term deal with Macarthur Coal (MCC), which is expected to be worth $250 million. AIO up 0.5c to 175.5c.
  • ISS Group (ISS) up 16% in two days on takeover talk. ISS last traded at 24c.
  • Downer EDI (DOW) has announced $750 million worth of new contracts. Patersons maintain their BUY recommendation and 979c target price. DOW remains their top pick at the larger end of the engineering services sector. Up 24c to 834c. See research below.
  • Australian retail sales fell in December by a higher than expected 0.7%, compared to the 0.1% rise economists expected. David Jones (DJS) down 3.45% to 476c (Myer’s disappointing sales numbers haven’t helped), Harvey Norman (HVN) down 3c to 375c and JB Hi-Fi (JBH) down 2.28% to 2058c.

The Dow Futures were up 6 at midday

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