Market Update – 18th April 2018 – AUD Barely Changed, Commodities & Equities Perform Better Overnight

The Aussie dollar has barely moved over the past 24 hours managing to stay in a very tight range against all the majors. As such not a great deal of commentary to add to this other than more of the same. Eventually volatility will return to Forex markets and the AUD, just as they did for U.S equities a month or so back, but until that happens there simply isn’t a great deal to write about.

Commodities markets and equities performed better with the Nasdaq up nearly 1.8% while the Dow and S&P closed higher by around 0.9% and 1.1% respectively. European and UK equities also posted solid gains of between 0.4% and 1.6%. Zinc posted a third straight day of gains, while iron ore prices edged higher with copper, nickel, lithium and uranium which should bode well for local equities given the ASX’s heavy waiting towards metals exploration and mining. For those of you who are interested in the stock market and commodities investing, it may be worthwhile looking at Uranium and the associated pure play stocks on the ASX as a theme for 2018. Nuclear reactor restarts in Japan are driving some enthusiasm that prices may finally appreciate from as well as a global need for clean base-load electricity to power the electric vehicle revolution. I have my eyes on a few Aussie uranium stocks but have yet to pull the trigger. The last Uranium bull market saw prices rise from about US$20 a pound to around US$140 a pound between 2000 and 2007. The associated uranium stocks went ballistic as a result.

AUD EXCHANGE RATES:

AUD/USD – 0.7769

AUD/GBP – 0.5435

AUD/EUR – 0.6279

AUD/NZD – 1.0580

AUD/JPY – 83.157

USD/BTC – $7,856

OTHER MARKETS: 

All Ords (XAO) – 5,934

Gold – A$1733/oz

Silver –  A$21.59/oz

WTI – US$66.57/barrel

DATA RELEASES TODAY:

GBP – CPI y/y at 7.30pm