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That’s it from us today at Markets Live. Thanks for tuning in!
Alex Druce will be back in the morning to tie up what has been a pretty extraordinary week.
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Australia’s blue-chip companies did the heavy lifting on Thursday as the S&P/ASX 200 extended its post-pandemic high with the best session in five weeks and briefly reached 7000 points.
Gains for miners BHP and Rio Tinto, the Big Four banks, biotech CSL, Fortescue Metals and Telstra helped the benchmark index add another 1 per cent to close at a new 13-month high of 6998.8.
It was the market’s fifth rise on the trot, and still the longest winning run since early December.
Thursday’s barnstorming session also saw the local benchmark nudged an intraday peak of 7012.4 and move within 3 per cent of the all-time high set on February 20 last year.
The miners and banks were strong as the ASX 200 added 1 per cent to close at 6998.8 on Thursday, its highest finish in 13 months.
It was the market’s best session in five weeks and a fifth straight rise - continuing its longest winning run since early December.
The local benchmark moved within 3 per cent of its all-time high set on February 20 last year when it nudged an intraday peak of 7012.4.
The iron ore giants, Big Four banks, biotech CSL, Wesfarmers, Macquarie Group, Woolworths and. Telstra all finished higher.
US futures continued to climb throughout the afternoon and were pointing to gains on Wall Street tonight.
Opinion
On the eve of one of the most highly anticipated annual meetings of the season, it’s virtually inevitable that Rio Tinto will suffer an embarrassing large vote against its remuneration report.
This will be a protest from major shareholders around the world who were livid over the generous parting gift, valued at $48 million, the Rio board awarded to the former chief executive Jean-Sebastian Jacques.
His resignation was forced by a large angry mob of shareholders who held him largely accountable for the cultural carnage resulting from blowing up indigenous sacred sites in West Australia’s Juukan Gorge.
Regulatory approvals for the third pillar of Australia’s vaccine strategy may not be obtained until the end of the year, keeping the country largely reliant on the AstraZeneca jab for the time being.
Australia has more than 50 million doses of Novavax’s COVID vaccine on order, and while the US pharma giant is confident it can deliver, there is no set timeline in its contract. The local rollout could be months away, with the company prioritising approvals from regulators in the US and the UK first.
Concerns about the nation’s access to more vaccine options came into focus over the past week, with the government’s reliance on the AstraZeneca product increasingly questioned amid conflicts over the release of doses from Europe and a review of possible links between the AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots.
The country has also purchased 20 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. But this must be imported too, with only 870,000 doses received so far, according to a federal government spokeswoman.
The Reserve Bank’s charter requires it to work towards the economic prosperity and welfare of all Australians, but for most people that can be narrowed down to one issue – house prices.
Since the advent of non-bank lenders in the mortgage market in the 1990s, property prices have grown faster than wages and inflation, generating an ongoing debate about who is to blame for a situation that leaves one of the world’s most sparsely populated nations with some of the globe’s most expensive housing.
It’s an issue of which the RBA is acutely aware. And the sharp lift in house prices through the past 12 months, as interest rates have fallen to their lowest levels in history while governments have thrown billions of dollars at housing stimulus packages, has amplified the focus on the RBA and its role.
Commonwealth Bank’s head of Australian economics, Gareth Aird, says falling interest rates have been a major economic tailwind for the past 30 years.
Roc Partners has reclaimed the upper hand in the arm wrestle for $220 million orchard landlord Vitalharvest, trumping Macquarie’s latest bid by 4 cents per share.
ASX-listed Vitalharvest on Thursday said Roc had increased its takeover proposal to $1.16 per unit, just a day after Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets had lifted its own bid to $1.12 to match an offer by the Sydney-based fund manager.
Roc may now also purchase the assets of the Vitalharvest Freehold Trust for $329.6 million, up from $322.2 million.
Vitalharvest manages the land on which Costa Group farms berry and citrus fruits in seven locations across NSW, South Australia, and Tasmania.
Raphael Geminder’s investment vehicle Gallin has hit back at listed health and beauty company McPherson’s, which earlier today issued a Target’s Statement rubbishing Gallin’s $1.34 per share takeover offer as “utterly opportunistic”.
Nick Perkins, Gallin’s managing director, said McPherson’s had failed to address shareholder uncertainty over the business’ performance and accused the business of “losing its way”.
“Gallin remains highly concerned with the profound lack of transparency and failure by McPherson’s to provide clarity on current financial performance,” he said.
“The Target Statement is utterly underwhelming and uninformative – it contains no new information or tangible plans and reinforces that this is a company that has lost its way.”
Helsinki: Greenland’s main opposition party, which campaigned heavily against an Australian company’s mining project involving uranium and other metals on the Arctic island, has emerged as the biggest party after winning more than a third of votes in an early parliamentary election.
The result of casts doubt on the mining complex at Kvanefjeld in the south of the Arctic island and sends a strong signal to international mining companies wanting to exploit Greenland’s vast untapped mineral resources.
The island of 56,000 people, which former US President Donald Trump offered to buy in 2019, is part of the Kingdom of Denmark but has broad autonomy.
With all votes counted on Wednesday (Greenland time), the left-leaning Community of the People party (Inuit Ataqatigiit) had secured 37 per cent of the votes, entitling it to 12 seats in the Greenlandic national assembly, the 31-seat Inatsisartut.
Opinion
There is a divergence between the inflation expectations in financial markets and those of central bankers. Which side is right might depend on whether there is a break from a perplexing long-term trend.
For the moment, central bankers are sanguine about the outlook for inflation despite the enormous monetary and fiscal policy responses to the pandemic that are seeing many trillions of dollars of relief and stimulus spending and liquidity being pumped into the global financial system.
The minutes of the March meeting of the US Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee meeting released overnight confirmed that the Fed expects to keep its benchmark lending rate at or near zero until 2024.