• The ASX will open marginally lower on Monday
  • Wall Street dipped again on Friday ahead of the FOMC meeting this week
  • Indian billionaire Adani becomes second richest man

Local shares are set to open modestly lower on Monday. At 8am AEST, the ASX 200 September futures contract is pointing down by 2 points.

On Friday, Wall Street remained on edge ahead of the FOMC meeting, with all three major stock indexes finishing in the red.

The S&P 500 was down 0.72%, the Dow Jones by 0.45% and Nasdaq by 0.90%. For the week, each fell by around 4%-6%.

The FedEx share price plunged the most in 40 years after dropping 21% on dismal Q1 results.

The company has temporarily grounded some of its cargo aircrafts as its CEO Raj Subramaniam said he expected the economy to enter a ‘worldwide recession’.

This week, the market’s attention will squarely be on the Fed’s monetary policy decision, which will be revealed at 4am on Thursday AEST.

Most analysts still predict a 75bp increase, but some pundits are also calling 100bp.

“To us, at this point in the cycle and with real term interest rates around +1.0%, a 100bp increase is unnecessary and potentially risky. Also note that an additional 100bps of hikes is forecast for the remainder of the year; and the market sees the risk of more,” says a note out of Westpac.

Meanwhile, oil prices were down 3% for the week, taking the Brent crude price to US$91.95 a barrel.

“The oil market is losing its tightness and that will likely continue if central banks worldwide remain aggressive with fighting inflation,” said OANDA analyst, Edward Moya.

But data from China was far more encouraging, with retail sales, industrial production and fixed asset investment all comfortably beating expectations.

Gold broke below US$1,680 on Thursday and has been heavily under pressure since, falling close to US$1,650 before finding some support. At the time of writing, the spot gold price is trading at US$1,677.75 an ounce.

In other news, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has climbed the wealth rankings and surpassed Jeff Bezos as the world’s second richest person. Adani now has $US146.8 billion fortune, and lags behind only Elon Musk’s $US263.9 billion net worth.

To cryptos where Bitcoin is down 2.65% in the last 24 hours to change hands at US$19,378.

The Biden administration has put further pressure on the crypto market after instructing relevant agencies to increase their Bitcoin and crypto enforcement last Friday.

And ahead this week, it will be a short week as the ASX will be closed on Thursday to mark the Queen’s death.
 

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Galilee Energy (ASX:GLL)
A non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed with leading Australian energy infrastructure business, APA Group. The MoU covers the potential development of infrastructure to connect Glenaras Gas Project to east coast gas markets.

Narryer Metals (ASX:NYM)
Narryer has entered an option agreement to acquire a rare earths (REE) project at Rocky Gully in WA. Significant REE mineralisation was identified in saprolite from multiple drilling intersects over ~1.5km strike, potentially hosted as ionic absorption clay. The Rocky Gully Project also shows potential for magmatic and lateritic Ni-Cu-Co mineralisation.

Gold Mountain (ASX:GMN)
Gold Mountain has executed a binding agreement with Mars Mines, granting GMN a 60-day exclusive option to acquire up to a 75% interest in a package of highly prospective lithium licences in northeastern Brazil.  The eastern Brazilian lithium belt covers all known past and present lithium producing districts in Brazil.

Aus Tin Mining (ASX:ANW)
The company has executed a binding term sheet for the sale of the company’s wholly owned subsidiary, Ten Star Mining. Ten Star holds the tenements and other assets, including a rehabilitation bond, relating to the Granville Tin project in Tasmania. The purchaser is Zeehan-based Spero Mining, an unrelated private company which holds nearby mining tenements. The purchase price was $650k.

Sarytogan Graphite (ASX:SGA)
The company reported further drilling results from the Sarytogan Graphite Deposit in Central Kazakhstan. The ST-71 hole returned a total of 133.9m of graphite mineralisation in separate intervals including 5.8m @ 26.4% TGC from 41.4m. High-grade graphite was returned from surface in ST-70 and included 14.3m @ 28.5% TGC from surface.

Read MoreMarkets

Featured Companies

You might be interested in