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Yesterday, our local market ended its three-day winning streak, declining 0.5% with nearly all sectors posting losses, except for the utilities and financial sector. The biggest laggard on the market was the tech sector, which follows the 1.2% tumble seen over in Wall Street for its Nasdaq index on Tuesday.

The biggest gainer yesterday was Imugene (ASX:IMU), which rose 9.3% after the company provided an update on its clinical trial, which is currently in its first Phase, recruiting patients with triple negative breast cancer. Meanwhile the worst performer was St Barbara (ASX:SBM), which issued its financial year 2023 guidance, entailing higher gold production however at higher costs compared to financial year 2022. The gold miner will postpone its full-year results presentation to the 31^st of August.

The most traded stocks by Bell Direct clients yesterday included the BetaShares Australian Strong Bear Hedge Fund (ASX:BBOZ), Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) and BHP Group (ASX:BHP).

In the US, all three benchmarks rallied after a key inflation reading showed a better-than-expected slowdown for rising prices. The headline CPI for July lifted 8.5% year over year, whereas economists were expecting increases of 8.7%. And it was flat compared to June. So now the Fed will take this report into consideration along with other key economic data, ahead of its September meeting where it’s expected to lift interest rates again. And major tech stocks outperformed the market with Netflix up 6% and Meta up 5.8%.

What to watch today:

• Our market is expected to follow the US and open 1% higher if you go by the SPI futures.
• Reporting wise, some companies announcing their earnings today include AMP (ASX:AMP), Mirvac Group (ASX:MGR), QBE Insurance Group (ASX:QBE), ResMed (ASX:RMD), Arena REIT (ASX:ARF) and Telstra (ASX:TLS).
• In terms of forecast expectations:
  • Citi is expecting ResMed to deliver $US827m NPAT.
  • While consensus expects Telstra to deliver $2.085b NPAT.
  • And Mirvac Group, Citi is expecting the property developer to deliver NPAT of $615m, while consensus is less modest at $576.4m.
• In commodities:
  • Oil prices were trading higher at about US$91 a barrel, following renewed gasoline demand and a cooler-than-expected inflation reading that drove investors into riskier assets.
  • The gold price was also up, given the tame inflation report may mean the Fed may not opt for aggressive rate hikes.
  • The spot iron ore price trades at US$111 a tonne.
• Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) and SSR Mining (ASX:SSR) are set to go ex-dividend today.
• Online foreign exchange company OFX Group (ASX:OFX) will be holding its AGM today.

Trading Ideas:

• Citi have decided to maintain its Sell rating on Commonwealth Bank (ASX:CBA) with a price target of $90.75. Citi believe CBA’s results were in line with expectations and expect the focus to remain on the core earnings outlook where CBA has provided very little detail, instead referencing that medium term outlook on NIM, net interest margin (from Feb) is unchanged. What did other brokers think? Well Macquarie also have an Underperform rating with a less modest price target of $78.
• Trading Central has a bearish signal on Metcash (ASX:MTS) indicating that the stock price may fall from the close of $4.13 to the range of $3.00 – $3.20 in the next 65 days according to standard principals of technical analysis.