The market is having a good day — up 46 having been up 67 early on. The SFE Futures were up 68 this morning.

Wall Street closed up 213. The Dow was up 217 a best so closed on its highs. The S&P 500 is now in positive territory for 2010 and is up 6.2% from its low post a 14% fall from April 23. The S&P 500 closed above its 200 day moving average. The rally came on signs of inflationless growth in the US economy. Metals were mostly up on the LME, the Oil price went up $1.38 to $76.50 and Gold put on $9.90 to $1234.40. The Aussie dollar went up — now at 86.48c compared to 85.86c yesterday morning.

In other news today…

  • Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWS) launched a $US11.5bn ($13bn) bid for the 61% of British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSkyB) that it doesn’t already own. BSkyB rejected the offer even though Murdoch has already upped the bid to 700p-per share from 675p. BSkyB closed up 17% to 700p. Some brokers say NWS could pay up to 800p because of the potential scale benefits. NWS up 4.8% to 1876c…it was up 6.5% in the US overnight.
  • Foster’s Group (FGL) closed up 3% yesterday to 601c — a 9 month high. The stock is now up 17% since announcing they would split their beer and wine businesses. One broker says they are worth 650c without any corporate activity … talking it up … something is going on. FGL down 2.8% to 587c today.
  • Amcor (AMC) has bought Ball Plastics Packaging Americas from Ball Corporation for $US280m — four times EBITDA. Ball Plastics has five plants in North America and $US600m of annual sales. AMC up 2.9% to 661c.
  • Whitehaven Coal (WHC) says they will not undertake a capital raising in order to acquire some of Australia’s coal assets from Anglo American. WHC up 3.6% to 478c. They fell 8% last week.
  • Thai energy group, Banpu has lifted its stake in Centennial Coal (CEY) from 14.89% to 19.89%. CEY up 4.9% to 468c.
  • Sigma Pharmaceuticals (SIP) has named Mark Hooper as its Managing Director and CEO. He was most recently CFO of PaperlinX and previously CFO of SIP from 2001-2006. SIP unchanged at 48c.
  • Becton Property Group (BEC) has settled the sale of its Mernda Town Centre Development to Woolworths (WOW) for $31m. WOW up 19c to 2785c.
  • Total number of houses and apartments that went under construction in the 1st Q increased 4.3% to a seasonally adjusted 42,399.
  • One broker predicts the iron ore price to increase by 13% over the next 5 years. But of a flat forecast.
  • Stocks hitting fresh 52 week highs include: Cochlear (COH), IRESS Market Technology (IRE) and Riversdale Mining (RIV).

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