Welcome to Wednesday. 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 down 0.3% after indifferent results on Wall Street overnight. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the broader S&P 500 both closed flat, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ closed up 0.2%.The big miners and banks are all down in early trade.
- Myer Holdings Limited (ASX: MYR) shares are down 3.7% to $1.83 in early trade after the department store retailer reported just 0.1% growth in sales for the 3 months to October 25. The figure fell far short of what analysts were expecting, and comes despite new and refurbished stores.Same store sales – which excludes new stores – rose 0.7% over the quarter, lower than the 2.1% recorded in the July quarter.
Myer sales have now been basically flat over the past four years, suggesting management still has a long way to go to drive growth.
- Banks have sliced their term deposit rates, with new data showing that interest rates across 3-month, 6-month and 1-year term deposits have been slashed. National Australia Bank Ltd (ASX: NAB), Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC) and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ASX: ANZ) have quietly cut rates on 3-month deposits by at least 20 basis points since June.With most term deposit rates around 3%, that's only slightly ahead of inflation and another reason to consider quality stocks paying decent dividend yields. Add in franking credits and there are still many companies paying pre-tax rates of more than double the term deposit rate.
- Tweet of the Day
ASIC most shorted #ASX stocks…. pic.twitter.com/VDFlnYmqwe
CalibreInvest (@CalibreInvest) November 11, 2014
Shorters will be making a killing on Myer today.
- Stock of the Day – brought to you by Andrew Mudie – Azure Healthcare Ltd (ASX: AZV). Down by 50% and then up by 40% the next day, where is this stock heading? You can read Andrew's view here.
