Good morning, and welcome to the ABC’s finance blog! I’ll be guiding you through the latest market action for the next few hours.
It looks like the local share market will start its day modestly lower. ASX futures, which are a rough indicator of how the market may open, have risen by about 0.4%.
The Australian dollar has risen slightly to 69.96 US cents.
Houthi threat keeping oil prices high
On oil markets, Brent crude futures settled 0.9% higher at $US88.88 per barrel.
Mediators have passed Iran a proposal to de-escalate the war with the US that would offer a 10-day ceasefire to find ways to revive an interim deal reached last month. That’s according to Reuters, quoting an unnamed senior Iranian official.
While traders are hoping there will be renewed US-Iran negotiations at some stage, there has been a new complication which could drive oil prices even higher.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said they were imposing a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, opening a new front in the US-Israeli war on Iran and widening the threat to global energy supplies and trade beyond the Gulf.
US markets continue to fall
The Middle East tensions also weighed on Wall Street’s three major indexes, which finished trading lower this morning.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell less than the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones as the chip sector recovered some of the prior week’s losses.
The Dow fell 0.6% to 51,839 points, the S&P 500 lost 0.2% to 7,443 points and the Nasdaq slipped by less than 0.1% to 25,508 points.
Investors are also awaiting the release of profit results from America’s tech giants later this week — and expectations are incredibly high.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Tesla and Intel are some of the companies that will be reporting their June-quarter results in the next few days.
Anyway, please grab a coffee, tea or whatever you normally have in the morning, and I’ll have more updates for you shortly!
– with reporting by Reuters