The market is up 33. The SFE Futures were up 19 this morning.

Wall St. closed up 70 on Friday. Dow Jones hit 11,001 at its high.  Highest close since September 2008. The Dow was up 74 at best and unchanged at worst. Greece’s debt rating was downgraded to BBB — but an EU/IMF offer of a 45bn Euro loan at below market rates helped the Euro to rally. Metals were mostly up, oil fell 52c to $84.93 and Gold up $9 to $1161. The Aussie dollar strong – 93.64c compared to 92.87c Friday a.m.

In the news today…

  • The Macarthur Coal takeover battle continues. MCC announced late last week that Xstrata has held talks with one of their biggest shareholders and the AFR followed that up this morning saying Xstrata is planning to approach MCC to request preliminary talks about a takeover with a possible offer at $16 a share. MCC up 7.4%.
  • Two institutional shareholders — Ausbil Dexia and Perennial — have given the Seven Network–WesTrac merger the tick of approval after Kerry Stokes agreed to conditions that include a downside protection mechanism for minority shareholders. Kerry Stokes has agreed to cancel 15m of his 115m shares in the new merged company — Seven Group — if WesTrac fails to achieve its forecast FY11 EBITDA target of $231m. SEV up 3.77% to 770c.
  • Downer EDI (DOW) — Talk is that their Pearl consortium with US based Cubic Corp and the Commonwealth Bank is the NSW government’s preferred contractor to deliver a $1.2bn electronic ticketing system in greater Western Sydney. DOW has been a poor performer in the past 3 months on debt concerns — the stock has underperformed the market by 21.8%. DOW up 15c to 750c
  • Nufarm (NUF) say the tender offer for 20% of their shares at $14 each from Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical Co. received acceptances of 81.45%. NUF closed at 827c on Friday, 40.9% below the offer. NUF down 2% to 810c.
  • CBH Resources (CBH) has now granted Nyrstar access to conduct due diligence after receiving a fresh takeover approach from them. CBH had previously recommended to shareholders a JV deal with their largest shareholder — Toho Zinc — instead of the Nyrstar deal. CBH up 1c to 19c.
  • Talk that Australian GDP forecasts will have to be upgraded after strong performances in the Resources sector export markets in the last Q. A strong underlying factor for Australian equities in the eyes of international investors.
  • On Thursday we have Chinese GDP numbers with a consensus expectation for growth of 11.4% in the 1st Q. We also have Chinese Industrial production, Chinese fixed asset investment and Retail sales numbers (up 18%?).
  • Companies fresh 52 week highs this morning include: Bradken (BKN), Cochlear (COH), IOOF Holdings (IFL), Iluka Resources (ILU), News Corp (NWS), Mount Gibson (MGX).

The Dow Futures were up 41 at midday.

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

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