Australian Stock Market Report – Afternoon 10/28/13

Afternoon Market Update
(17:00 AEST)

Local participants showed few signs of doubt on Monday ahead of a busy week for market moving events. The ASX 200 has risen more than 4% this month, notwithstanding that result buyers continued to keep the upper hand over most on the session.

Miners were amongst the best improvers on Monday. Rio Tinto has agreed to sell its majority stake in its Clermont coal mine, in central Queensland for more than $1 billion. The miner will sell its 50.1 per cent stake in the Clermont mine to GS Coal, a joint venture owned by Glencore Xstrata and Sumitomo Corporation for $1.06 billion. The mine is Australia´s third largest thermal coal mine. The sale is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2014. RIO has now announced $US2.9b of asset sales in the calender year, including: Eagle Nickel( $US315m), Palabora ($US373m), Northparkes ($US820m), Clermont ($US1,015m) and the Turquoise Hill asset Altynalmas ($US235m)

Rare earth miner, Lynas Corporation (LYC) announces that the Malaysian Court of Appeal had dismissed an appeal by the Save Malaysia, Stop Lynas group seeking leave to apply for a judicial review of the Atomic Energy Licensing Board's decision to issue the Temporary Operating Licence (TOL) to Lynas. The Court of Appeal's decision affirms the original decision of the Kuantan High Court, which was announced on 29 January 2013. LYC shares ended flat at 36 cents

Global education services provider Navitas Limited (NVT) downgraded earnings guidance for the 2014 financial year. NVT expects to achieve FY14 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of $138m to $148m. The midpoint of this range represents 10% growth on prior year. NVT shares finished down by 9.4%

There's plenty of data to come this week particularly in the US, although much of it relates to the shutdown period and therefore it remains to be seen how the markets respond to the news because the figures will be a less than timely indicator of the true underlying trend in the US economy. The figures that will capture the progress of the US economy most accurately will be the ISM data and ADP report.

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