The market is up 21. The SFE Futures were up 21 this morning.

Wall St. closed up 47 overnight. Dow up 55 at best and down 6 at worst. Volumes were thin ahead of the jobs numbers tonight. Lots of economic data overnight. Metals fell overnight, Gold dropped $9 to $1133 and the oil price lost 29c to $80.40. The Aussie dollar fell to 90.05c from 90.52c yesterday morning.

In the news today…

  • CSR Ltd (CSR) up 1c too 169c — not much of a reaction from yesterday’s report that China’s Bright Food might bid again for their sugar unit. Would be positive if they did.
  • Extract Resources (EXT) announced a 1H net loss of $13.4m. They are currently carrying out a feasibility study on the Rossing South uranium project in Namibia. They have $99.3m cash on hand and say uranium demand will continue to grow “for many years to come”. EXT down 3c to 750c.
  • Woodside Petroleum (WPL) CEO Don Voelte has sold more than 25% of his shares in WPL, worth around $1.6m. He still owns 96,986 shares worth $4.29m. WPL up 41c to 4470c.
  • ANZ Bank’s (ANZ) announcement yesterday that they had received formal approval for a foreign bank licence in India has received a positive response from brokers this morning. ANZ up 1.2% to 2396c
  • Australian Worldwide Exploration (AWE) up 4.1% to 267c after announcing drilling is about to begin at their Hoki-1 exploration well.
  • Lihir Gold (LGL) has sold their failed Ballarat operation to Castlemaine Goldfields (CGT). CGT will pay $4.5m to LGL in cash plus a 2.5% royalty on future production, capped at $50m. It was a colossal cock up by LGL, having paid $350m for the asset in 2007. LGL down 3c to 291c.
  • ConnectEast Group (CEU) says average daily revenue on EastLink is up 19.8% on last year in February. CEU unchanged at 42.5c.
  • Standard and Poor’s have announced their March Quarterly rebalance to the S&P/ASX Indices. Some notable changes: Asciano Group (AIO) takes Intoll Group’s (ITO) spot in the S&P/ASX 50 and Myer Ltd (MYR) enters the S&P/ASX 100, as does Boart Longyear (BLY).
  • According to a report issued by EnergyQuest, Australian crude oil production in 2009 fell to its lowest level in 40 years.
  • Stocks hitting fresh yearly highs today include: Andean Resources (AND), Lycopodium Ltd (LYL), MAp Group (MAP), OneSteel (OST). Stocks hitting fresh 52 week lows: Marion Energy (MAE), Geodynamics (GDY).

The Dow Futures were up 11 at midday.

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