The market is up 17. The SFE Futures were down 15 this morning.

Wall St. closed down 5 overnight. The Dow was up 58 at best and down 42 at worst. It was the fifth fall in six sessions with the Dow now down 4.3% in 5 days. Lack of volume in US markets suggests a lack of conviction. G20 have targeted halving deficits by 2013.  Oil price fell 61c to $78.25, Gold was down $17.70 to $1238.50. The Aussie dollar fell to 87.17c compared to 8740c yesterday morning.

ASX 200 is down 238 points or 5.15% in four days. The ASX 200 triggered a technical short term MACD SELL signal yesterday as did all the major banks and 50 other stocks in the ASX 300.

In other news today…

  • Downer EDI (DOW) down 5% to 379c has come out and clarified their cash position saying they have “ample liquidity” and that they’re not manipulating their working capital to lift their FY accounts. A leaked email to The Sydney Morning Herald claimed their Works Australia engineering division was deferring payment of $35m to creditors until after June 30.
  • Macmahon (MAH) has reiterated their 2010 FY net profit forecast of between $36m-$40m and added that they would target a dividend payout policy of 50% but didn’t have enough franking credits to frank a 2010 final dividend. MAH has won $1.2bn worth of work since the start of the year and the order book exceeds $2.1bn. MAH up 3% to 58.5c.
  • Photon Group (PGA) provided a trading update (downgrade) and a new capital structure yesterday. Their shares remain in a trading halt and last traded at 102c. They expect FY2010 normalised EBITDA (excluding one offs) to be around $75m and FY2010 normalised NPAT (excluding one-off costs) to be around $19m, down from $28.2m. Capital structure reset.
  • Arrow Energy (AOE) has been awarded 2 coal bed methane blocks in India. AOE says the two blocks have high CBM resource potential with good opportunity for early commercialization if pilot testing goes well. AOE up 1c to 487c.
  • Nufarm (NUF) up 5% to 547c after being upgraded by a broker this morning to Neutral from Underperform.
  • One analyst says RIO shareholders will not vote in favour of their iron ore JV with BHP after a briefing with RIO CEO Tom Albanese. He says the synergies were acknowledged but no comment “on a potential change in structure of the equalization payment”. BHP up 17c to 1866c and RIO up 1.6% to 6970c.
  • The retail share offer for the Valemus IPO closes this Friday.
  • Stocks hitting fresh 52 week lows include: Downer EDI (DOW), Oceana Capital (OCP), Servcorp (SRV) and Transfield Services Infrastructure (TSI)

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