The market is up 48. Good start to the week. The SFE Futures were up 11 this morning.

Dow up 32 on Friday. Fifth rise on the trot. The US market was up 7.3% last week. Dow up 42 at best and down 37 at worst. European markets up. UK FTSE up 0.62%, DAX (Germany) up 0.43%, CAC40 (France) up 0.59%.

Takeover Talk — Back page of the AFR suggests Iress Market Technology (IRE) might be bid for by the ASX Ltd. IRE up 6c to 706c. Macquarie Equities says Woodside Petroleum (WPL) should start living up to expectations or accept a takeover offer, possibly by BHP and another big party. WPL up 27c to 4287c. There is also continued talk of Santos getting bid for with Citi saying an offer of $15bn would be achievable. STO up 2.9% to 1455c.

In the news today…

  • Arrow Energy (AOE) announces that Royal Dutch Shell has indicated that it plans to exercise its preemptive right to take up a stake of the Tipton West assets recently bought by AOE from Beach Petroleum.
  • GRD Ltd (GRD) has agreed to a takeover deal. It signed a binding agreement with AMEC to acquire its entire shares for $106m. (55c a shares — an 11.1% premium to its last trading price of 49.5c)
  • Macquarie Airports (MAP) announces passenger traffic at its Sydney airport for the month in June fell 4.1% from last year.
  • Babcock & Brown Japan Property (BJT) has cut the value of its property portfolio by 13.3% due to the economic environment in Japan.
  • iSOFT (ISF) has agreed to a $5.9m primary care deal in Spain.
  • The Guangdong Foreign Trade Group has taken a 15% stake in Kagara.

In other news…

  • PPI fell by a larger than expected 0.8% in the June Q and is up 2.1% for the year. Economists expected PPI to be down 0.1% on the quarter, +3% on year
  • Citi says the upcoming results for media companies will be the worst on record, “a train wreck” in fact, but it will provide a “great buying opportunity”. It has raised Austereo (AEO), Fairfax Media (FXJ) and WA News (WAN) to Buy from Hold, and upped its target price on APN News (APN) to 146c from 127c, Seek (SEK) to 349c from 244c and Ten Network (TEN) to 75c from 50c.
  • UBS upped its recommendation on Hastings Diversified Utilities (HDF), APA Group (APA), Spark Infrastructure (SKI) and Challenger Infrastructure (CIF) to Neutral from Buy. They say, SP AusNet (SPN), HDF, Transfield Services Infrastructure (TSI) and Infigen Energy (IFN) are their top picks in the utilities sector.
  • Transpacific Industries (TPI) has fallen as much as 20% after resuming trading after five months in a trading halt. Now only down 1%.
  • Rumours of Virgin Blue (VBA) undertaking a recapitalization with The Australian reporting it has held talks with a Middle Eastern carrier.

The Dow Futures are down 7 at noon.

MARCUS PADLEY is the Author of the MARCUS TODAY Daily Stockmarket Newsletter.

For a free 21 day obligation free trial of the MARCUS TODAY newsletter (and no we won’t ask for a credit card number) please START A FREE TRIAL — you will receive two daily emails about the stockmarket, our MORNING EMAIL with all the stuff you need to know ahead of the trading day ahead and a DAILY EMAIL with all the midday events, news, comments and Ideas from Marcus and his Team.

You will also be given a password to the MARCUS TODAY website including access to all the emails as well as Educational, Entertaining and Researched Articles from Marcus and his Team and an archive where you can catch up on a whole week or month in just a few minutes. Or Browse at length. We are sure you will enjoy and profit from what we offer.