US markets weak, hedge funds target ASX lithium companies
US equities fell overnight as Wall Street slated for the end of the week for a big-company earnings report, which could indicate how inflation is affecting businesses.
Earnings season begins with earnings yesterday and Wednesday from PepsiCo and Delta Air Lines, followed by bank stocks JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Citigroup later in the week.
Amazon and Alphabet have fallen by more than 3-3 per cent. Tesla fell 6.5 percent and Netflix nearly 5.2 percent. Nike, Caterpillar and Walt Disney lost more than 2 percent, pushing the Dow down.
Twitter shares fell 11.3 percent after Elon Musk ended a $44 billion deal to buy the social media company. The billionaire took issue with the number of bots and fake accounts on the platform and said that Twitter was not truthful about how much authentic activity was on the platform. After the close, Twitter’s lawyers said in a letter that Elon Musk’s attempt to end the acquisition was invalid and incorrect. This is a story that will last a long time.
Casino shares Wynn Resorts and Las Vegas Sands led Monday’s losses, falling more than 6 percent each on the back of worsening trends in China over COVID-19, including a week-long closure of casinos in Macau. Shanghai also detected its first case of the BA.5 subvariant.
In further news from China, Ganfeng Lithium has agreed to buy Argentina-focused mining conglomerate Lithia for up to $962m, as China steps up its fight for the metals needed to power electric vehicles.
Watch out for a continued short-selling attack on lithium companies such as Lake Resources (ASX: LKE) and Core Lithium (ASX: CXO) in Australia today, with J Capital releasing its latest short report on Monday targeting Australian lithium producer Lake Resources. did. Of course these reports are always issued after the event – Post J Capital is already securing a short position in the company. Both Core and Lake currently have about 8-9 percent of their issued capital sold — both stocks recently moved to the ASX200 — a phenomenon that has made scrips readily available for short sellers to borrow. . The last time J Capital released a brief report on Vulcan Resources (ASX: VUL) – when the report contained some factual errors that resulted in J Capital later issuing an apology.
Lithium companies in the US were weak, with Albertamar down 3 per cent, Livent 3.7 per cent and Lithium American down 3.8 per cent. It appears that Lithium, one of the biggest momentum trades in the market, is now being targeted by hedge funds.
Bitcoin futures fell 6.2 per cent but remained above $20K.
WTI crude closed with a decline of 0.7 per cent in early trade.
Copper fell 2.6 percent on Friday after limiting its fifth-straight week’s decline.
Today SPI futures in Australia are pointing to a gain of 18 points after yesterday’s weakness.
worldwide statistics
US markets closed with a fall. The Dow Jones fell 0.5 per cent to 31,174, the S&P 500 fell 1.2 per cent to 3,854 and the Nasdaq fell 2.3 per cent to 11,373.
Across the Atlantic, European markets mostly closed lower. Paris closed 0.6 per cent, Frankfurt 1.4 per cent and London’s FTSE flat.
Asian markets closed with a mixed trend. Tokyo’s Nikkei lost 1.1 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 2.8 per cent and China’s Shanghai Composite lost 1.3 per cent.
Yesterday the Australian stock market fell 1.1 per cent, or 76 points, to 6,602.
ex-dividend
Two companies are willing to do business without the right to dividends:
Metcash (ASX:MTS) is paying 11 cents outright.
Sunland Group (ASX:SDG) is paying 30 cents outright.
dividends payable
Many companies today are willing to pay eligible shareholders, including:
NZME (ASX: NZM)
SPDR S&P/ASX 200 Financial EX A-REIT (ASX:OZF)
SPDR S&P/ASX 200 Resource (ASX: OZR)
SPDR S&P/ASX 50 (ASX:SFY)
SPDR S&P/ASX Small Ordinary (ASX:SSO)
SPDR S&P/ASX 200 (ASX: STW)
SPDR MSCI Australia Select High Dividend Yield (ASX:SYI)
Goods
Iron ore futures are trading flat at USD 114.05 a tonne.
Iron ore futures are pointing to a fall of 3.3 per cent.
Gold fell by USD 10.60, or 0.6 per cent, to USD 1731.70 an ounce.
Silver fell by $ 0.10, or 0.54 per cent, to USD 19.13 an ounce.
Oil fell by $ 0.70, or 0.7 percent, to US $ 104.09 a barrel.
On the London Stock Exchange, Rio lost 0.5 per cent, BP 0.5 per cent and Shell 0.6 per cent.
currencies
An Australian dollar has weakened against the US dollar yesterday at 7:10 am, buying 67.36 US cents (Mon: 68.51 cents), 56.65 pence sterling, 92.60 yen and 67.08 euro cents.
