The market is up 2. The SFE Futures suggested a 50-point rise in the market this morning.

The Dow Jones was up 153 — It moved in a big 155-point range and closed up 1.2% after setting a new intraday high of 12,966 on the back of better-than-expected earnings results from blue chips. Honeywell International, Catepillar, Pfizer all reported impressive results. The Dow is now only 38 points shy of 13,000 and has closed in record territory 34 times since the beginning of October last year. It was a big week for the 3 major indices, the Dow was up 2.8%, the S&P500 2.2% and the NASDAQ finished up 1.4% helped by Google’s impressive profit result. The NASDAQ is now interestingly just (still) 50% off the record it set in 2000 during the dot com boom.

Resources performing well today. BHP up 18c to 3003c and Rio up 43c to 8385c. Metals mostly up on Friday, Copper up 1.6%, Nickel up 2.4% and Zinc 2.2%. Zinifex up 13c to 1554c. Aluminium down 0.1%. Oil price up $1.75 to $63.56 on concern that the presidential election in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer (which occurred on the weekend), may result in a disruption of shipments. Nigeria was the fifth largest source of US oil imports last year. Woodside up 38c to 3350c. Gold up $7.50. Newcrest up 50c to 2352c.

The market has followed Wall Streets record breaking lead on Friday and has begun the week strongly. US quarterly production results are in full swing. The market is closed on Wednesday for Anzac Day (Collingwood v Essendon at the MCG). Not too much happening this morning.

  • ANZ Bank (ANZ) down 7c to 3114c after announcing this morning it has upped its offer for E*Trade Australia (ETR) to 430c a share. The revised bid is now within the independent expert’s valuation range and has received approval from the ETrade independent directors who have recommended the offer in absence of a superior bid. ETR up 9c to 427c. The share price is telling you that its game over.
  • Domino Pizza’s (DMP) chief executive has told the AFR that he is confident that the pizza chain’s European expansion will deliver. The company’s share price has failed to deliver since listing at 220c 18 months ago and was recently wracked after it reported a 46% fall in 1H profit. DMP up 5c to 290c.
  • Alumina (AWC) up 3c to 733c on completing its $250m off-market buyback, priced at 648c a share representing 3.3% of the issued shares.
  • Lihir Gold (LHG) down 2c to 303c after its institutional entitlement offer raised $850m at 230c a share and its institutional placement raised $120m at final price of 280c a share. The $1.2bn total capital raised will be used to repay debt, hedge contracts and fund future expansion.
  • Airline Partners Australia announced this morning that will not extend Friday’s 4 May closing date and will accelerate payment terms for Qantas (QAN) shareholders. QAN is unchanged 537c. It is crunch time … No point delaying it.

We have an article in Marcus Today today looking at how the resources boom will end. Worth a read.

THE MORNING MARKET REPORT is provided by the MARCUS TODAY daily stockmarket newsletter. You can subscribe for a free five day trial here.