• Wall Street down for third consecutive session
  • Bitcoin plunges by 11pc
  • NAB’s CEO Ross McEwan says housing shortage is the biggest issue facing Australia

 

The ASX is set to fall for the third consecutive session today, in line with more losses on Wall Street and Europe. At 8am AEST, the ASX 200 index futures was pointing down by around -0.35%.

Overnight, the S&P 500 tumbled further by -0.77%, blue chip Dow Jones by -0.84%, and tech heavy Nasdaq by -1.17%.

Sentiment has been smashed in recent days as a spate of bad news from China and the prospect of more Fed hikes have derailed the year’s rally.

But some analysts aren’t too concerned about the latest selloff.

“I don’t expect stocks to see a significant correction here, but some more modest weakness or consolidation would be perfectly normal,” said Carson Group’s strategist, Ryan Detrick.

Bitcoin plunged by more than 11% in the last few hours, trading at US$25,999 several minutes ago, and touching a two-month low on risk aversion.

The carnage was more pronounced in altcoins – Ripple (XRP) was down almost 20% to US76c.

To stock news, Moderna was the S&P 500’s best performer overnight, up by 7.4% after news that Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s former deputy chief medical officer, has taken a job as senior medical consultant at the vaccine giant.

Tech stocks meanwhile are still suffering as the bond rout sent yields to the highest levels since 2008. Meta and Tesla shed 3%, while Apple was down -1.5%.

Back home, earnings season continues today on the ASX, and stocks to report results today include Allkem (ASX:AKE), Latitude (ASX:LFS), and Magellan (ASX:MFG).

 

Lack of housing is our biggest crisis – NAB

NAB CEO Ross McEwan says  the housing shortage is the biggest issue facing the country.

The planning process and getting an approval to build a house is currently too complicated and needs to be simplified, he says.

“That’s not to say we want houses built in the wrong places – but simplification. Taking 5, 10 years to get a development up and running is just far too long in this environment and we need action pretty quickly,” McEwan said.

He explained that we can’t just simply pull the plug on immigration to lessen the housing crisis, because there’s still a very significant lack of labour to fulfil the number of jobs available.

In terms of mortgage stress, McEwan believes there has been a slight uptick in the number of customers struggling.

“There’s probably 50% of our fixed rate borrowers who haven’t actually seen an increase yet, because they had a two- or a three-year fixed rate loan. So some of those customers still have to experience it.”

 

In other markets …

Gold price fell another -0.15% overnight, trading now at US$1,889.02 an ounce.

ANZ analysts believe that gold has a huge runway ahead.

“Overall, we see short-term headwinds to the gold price. However, our medium-and long-term view on gold remains positive. We shift our price target of $2,100 to the end of Q1 2024,” says the note from ANZ.

Aussie dollar keeps getting slashed, trading a few moments ago at US64.02c.

CBA warned that the troubles in the Chinese economy could drive the AUD to below US60c, a level not seen since the height of the pandemic in 2020.

“The deteriorating situation in China means the risk of AUD/USD dipping below US60¢ before year‑end is growing,” noted CBA.

Meanwhile, crude prices rebounded by 1%, with WTI now trading at US$80.14 a barrel.

Iron Ore 62% fe also rose by +0.8% overnight to US$105.64/tonne.

 

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Jaxsta (ASX:JXT)
Jaxsta, the world’s largest database of official music credits, announced a landmark agreement with the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), a nonprofit organisation created to issue blanket mechanical licences for qualified streaming services in the US, such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal. In 2022, the MLC announced it had paid out over US$700 million in royalties to songwriters and publishers in the first 18 months of operation.

Corazon Mining (ASX:CZN)
Corazon announced the signing of a new exploration agreement with the Marcel Colomb First Nation of the Lynn Lake area in Manitoba, Canada. The new agreement replaces an existing exploration agreement established in 2018 in respect of the Lynn Lake Nickel Sulphide Project, and provides more structure on how the parties will work together to progress the exploration and development activities.

Lycaon Resources (ASX:LYN)
Lycaon says nickel copper diamond drilling has commenced at Bow River, targeting another ‘Savannah North’ discovery. The drilling will test large gravity anomaly defined in geophysical surveys that remain untested at depth located down plunge from historical high-grade nickel and copper mineralisation.

Galena Mining (ASX:G1A)
Galena says significant high-grade assay results have been received for Abra after the data cut-off associated with the recent 2023 Mineral Resource Estimate. Significant results include: 18.9m @ 17.1% lead and 30g/t silver, and 38.3m @ 12.1% lead and 15.4g/t silver.

Panoramic Resources (ASX:PAN)
Panoramic announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Savannah Nickel Mines, has agreed with Primero under which Primero will operate and maintain the process plant at the Savannah Nickel Mine. This transition to an owner operated model is anticipated to deliver operating cost savings immediately, says PAN.

 

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Corazon Mining and Lycaon Resources are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article. 

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