Morning Bell 7 August

In the US overnight, all three major benchmarks rallied after President Donald Trump announced a steep new tariff on imports of semiconductors and chips. That is, a 100% tariff on imported chips, with the exception for companies that are building in the US. The Dow Jones gained 0.18%, the S&P500 gained 0.73% and the Nasdaq rallied 1.21% at the close.

In European, Swiss stocks declined after their President and economic minister met with US government officials, with the aim of lowering the 39% tariffs imposed by the US.

While the STOXX600 closed 0.06% lower, the German DAX was just 0.33%, France’s CAC up 0.24% and the FTSE100 up 0.24%.

Locally yesterday, the Australian market gained 0.84%, with 10 of the 11 industry sectors in the green. The market was led by energy and materials stocks.

For today’s trading session, the SPI futures are suggesting a 0.31% drop at the open this morning, despite markets rallying overnight.

What to watch today:

• Balance of trade data for June will be released at 12:30pm.
• And keep watch of the share price movements of companies reporting their earnings results today, including AMP Group (ASX:AMP), AVITA Medical (ASX:AVH), Bannerman Energy (ASX:BMN), Light and Wonder (ASX:LNW) and QBE Insurance Group (ASX:QBE).
• In commodities,
  • Crude oil has dropped 1.32%, trading at US$64.30 per barrel, marking a fifth straight decline and hitting a fresh six-week low.
  • Gold is slightly lower down 0.3% at US$3,371.13
  • And iron ore is lower 0.43% at US$100.92 per tonne.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter maintains a Buy rating on Perpetual (ASX:PPT) and have increased their price target from $22.80 and $23.00. At the current share price of $21.16, this implies 8.7% share price growth in a year.
• And Trading Central have identified a bullish signal in Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS), indicating that the stock price may rise form the close of $2.79 to the range of $3.45 to $3.65 over 46 days, according to the standard principles of technical analysis.