Morning Bell 20 November

In the US overnight, Wall St rebounded after a 4 day losing streak with all 3 major indexes closing in the green. The S&P 500 gained 0.5%, while the Dow Jones edged 0.1% higher, and the Nasdaq advanced 0.8%, driven by a new all time high for Google parent company Alphabet, as well as a 3% gain for Nvidia ahead of its pivotal earnings release this morning. 

Markets across Europe were mainly down – the broader European Stoxx 600 Index edged less than 0.1% down, while the German DAX fell 0.1%, the French CAC 0.2%, and the British FTSE was the biggest slider, shedding 0.47%.

In Asia, China’s CSI gained 0.44%, but the other major markets all slid, including Hong Kong’s Hang Seng retreating 0.38%, and Japan’s Nikkei losing 0.34%.

Locally yesterday, the ASX 200 extended Tuesday’s rout with a further 0.25% slide, dropping the index to its lowest point in 6 months. Strong gains in materials, which were lead by the gold miners, were offset by a tough day for financials, as major banks including CommBank (ASX:CBA), Westpac (ASX:WBC) and Macquarie (ASX:MQG) all slid more than 1%, while ANZ (ASX:ANZ) fell 2%. 

In other major stock news, popular defence pick DroneShield (ASX:DRO) continued its tumultuous run from the last few weeks after it was announced that its US chief executive Matt McCrann resigned effective immediately, prompting a further 19% loss. After hitting peaks of over $6.50 per share as recently as October, the stock closed trading at less than $2 per share yesterday.

What to watch today:

• The SPI futures indicate that the ASX will snap its losing streak and regain some of its recent losses, predicting a 0.63% jump at the open. 
• Over to commodities, Crude Oil has dropped over 2% to US$59.50 per barrel, after reports indicated that the US government is renewing its efforts to end the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. In theory, this would reduce supply risks to Russian oil, which in turn caused the price to drop.
• In precious metals, Gold is trading more or less flat at US$4074 per ounce, while silver has gained just over a percent and is trading at US$52.21 per ounce. 
• And Iron ore remains just about flat at US$104.26 per tonne. 

Trading ideas:

• Bell Potter has maintained its Buy rating on agricultural chemicals supplier Nufarm (ASX:NUF), and upgraded its 12-month target price from $3.55 per share to $3.60 per share, after the company reported FY25 underlying EBITDA slightly ahead of expectations, and upgraded its FY26 guidance. 
• And Trading Central have identified a bullish signal in ResMed (ASX:RMD), indicating that the price may rise from the close of $37.98 per share, to the range of $43.50 to $44.75 per share over a period of 29 days, according to the standard principles of technical analysis.