On Thursday the S&P/ASX 200 (Index: ^AXJO) (ASX: XJO) pushed higher thanks largely to gains in the financial sector.
Will the market be able to build on this and finish the week on a high? Here are five things to watch on Friday:
Australian share market expected to open higher.
The Australian share market is expected to open the day higher on Friday. At the time of writing, SPI futures are pointing to the market opening 6 points or 0.1% higher this morning. This is despite a soft night of trade on Wall Street which saw the Dow Jones fall 0.3% and the S&P 500 drop 0.15%. The Nasdaq continued its winning streak with a slight gain.
REA Group earnings.
REA Group Limited (ASX: REA) results release will be one of the highlights of Friday. According to Bloomberg, the market expects the realestate.com.au operator to deliver a net profit after tax of $266.4 million.
More earnings.
It isn't just REA Group that is due to release its results today. Retail park owner Aventus Retail Property Fund (ASX: AVN) and embattled baby products retailer Baby Bunting Group Ltd (ASX: BBN) are expected to report their respective earnings. In respect to the latter, all eyes will be on what management says about trading conditions after the closure of many of its competitors.
Oil prices slide lower.
Many Australian energy producers including Santos Ltd (ASX: STO) and Woodside Petroleum Limited (ASX: WPL) dropped lower on Thursday after trade war tensions escalated and led to oil prices tumbling lower. Unfortunately for these companies, oil prices have continued to slide overnight. According to Bloomberg, the WTI crude oil price has fallen 0.4% to US$66.69 a barrel and the Brent crude oil price fell 0.4% to US$71.99 a barrel.
OceanaGold updates mineral resources estimate.
The OceanaGold Corp (ASX: OGC) share price will be one to watch after the gold miner released an updated mineral resource estimate for its Martha project at its Waihi gold mine in New Zealand. According to the release, the total indicated resource has increased by 700% to 0.76Mt @ 5.8 g/t Au for 140,000 ounces of gold.
