Welcome to Monday and the start of a new week. Here are the five things I'm looking at today on the Australian sharemarket.
- The S&P/ ASX 200 (Index: ^AXJO) (ASX: XJO) has opened 0.8% lower after US markets fell on Friday.
The Dow Jones dropped 0.6% as did the broader S&P 500, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ also fell 0.6%.
Oil prices rose with Brent Crude Oil surging 4.8% to US$65.56 per barrel while WTI Crude jumped 4.5% to US$60.30 per barrel.
(WTI stands for West Texas Intermediate and is the benchmark oil price in the US while the Brent crude oil price is more widely used in Europe.)Iron ore prices slipped 0.3% to US$61.85 per tonne overnight.
The Australian dollar is down against the US dollar and is currently buying 76.4 US cents.
- UGL Limited (ASX: UGL), now exclusively an engineering and contracting group has warned of further restructures and more one-off expenses to cut the group's costs. UGL will cut another 200 staff at a cost of $36.7 million – which the company says will save it $33 million annually.
The company says it has an order book at the of May of $5.1 billion, and expects underlying earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to come in at $47 million for this financial year. - Grocery distributor Metcash Limited (ASX: MTS) is attempting to turn around flagging sales through its IGA franchise network. One way is by cutting away non-core operations.
The company is looking (ASX PDF) at floating or off-loading its automotive business, consisting mainly of Autobarn aftermarket accessories stores, ABS and Midas service centres, AutoPro, CarParts and a wholesale operations network.The distributor could also be caught in the crossfire between discount supermarket chain ALDI and the two giants Coles – owned by Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES), and Woolworths Limited (ASX: WOW). It remains to be seen whether Metcash will be successful, with many hedge funds betting against the retailer. 17% of its shares are short sold, and Metcash is the second most shorted stock on the ASX.
- Tweet of the Day
<Why retail investors are losing out in the IPO boom – The Australian Financial Review https://t.co/t8Wd8qf19R
IPO view (@IPOview) May 23, 2015More unfair treatment of retail investors emerges. We've detailed seven issues we think the regulator already needs to address here.
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