The Market is up 7. Dow Jones was down 22. SFE Futures were up 17 this morning. The All Ords was up 22 early this morning which put it above the 5000 level although 5069 is the next technical resistance level (the high in 2011 and 2010).

The Dow was down 53 at worst on light volume with no economic news out of the US and many Asian markets closed for the week. The latest OECD report on the global economic outlook has seen the leading indicator for its 33 member states lifted from 100.3 to 100.4 in December, its third straight increase. Several of the world’s leading economies are showing signs of improvement while the eurozone had stabilised.

Best sectors — Financials (+0.3%), Technology (+0.2%) and Utilities (+0.2%). Worst sectors — Energy (-0.6%), Consumer Services (-0.3%) and Basic materials (-0.3%) sectors.

US Treasury will sell $32 billion in three-year bonds on Tuesday, $24 billion of 10-year bonds on Wednesday and $16bn of 30 year bonds on Thursday.

European market mixed — UK FTSE up 0.21%, German DAX down 0.24%, France up 0.03%, Spain down 1.18%, Italy down 0.61% as Silvio Berlusconi may be closing in on the lead ahead of the February 24/25 general elections.

Metals down — Copper down 1.14%, Nickel down 0.85%, Aluminium down 0.83%, Lead down 1.36%. Spot iron ore unchanged at $155.10. Gold down $16.60 to $1649.40.

  • NAB’s monthly business survey — Business confidence fell 1 point in January to an index reading of +3.
  • Bradken (BKN) — 1H Net profit up 8.5% to $46.7 million in line with forecast. Revenue was up 0.9% to $684.8 million. Interim dividend of 20c. BKN is up 9.02% to 665c and is dragging the rest of the mining services sector up.
  • Amcom (AMM) — 1H13 Profit of $10 million up 20% and inline with a forecast of $10.4 million. Revenue of $80.1 million up 43% and interim dividend of 2c. AMM is unchanged on 150.5c.
  • Whitehaven coal (WHC) has been given conditional approval for its two coal mine projects. It took three days instead of 3 months and reverses the negative sentiment from their recent announcement. There is still talk that Tinkler is still trying to engineer a bid now the standstill agreement preventing him from launching another bid has come to an end. WHC is up 6.76% to 316c.
  • Tabcorp Holdings — Ex Div. TAH is down 3.86% to 311.5c.
  • NRW Holdings (NWH) — Has been awarded a contract to provide drilling services to FMG at Cloudbreak mine. NWH is up 5.15% to 194c.
  • Lots of Results tomorrow — Interims from SGP, CSL, CBA, WOR, ANN, BLD, CPU, AMO, DMP, GBT, GFF, HIL, MCX, NRU, PMQ, SKE, USA, WIG. Finals from STW, LEI, SGN, OZL.
  • Acrux (ACR) – Patent application for underarm administration of testosterone formulations have been allowed by the US. ACR is up 8.73% to 386c