Latest stock market news videos & Morning Bell

US equities surged to session highs in the final hour of trading overnight, after October’s reading of consumer prices raised investor hopes that inflation has peaked. US CPI rose just 0.4% for the month and 7.7% from a year ago, its lowest annual increase since January. And core CPI, where volatile food and energy costs are excluded, increased 6.3% on an annual basis, which was also less than expected.

The Dow Jones jumped more than 1,100 points or 3.4%. This was the Dow’s largest one-day increase since stocks came out of the pandemic bear market in 2020. The S&P500 closed 5.2% higher, which was its biggest one-day rally since April 2020. And the Nasdaq gained 6.7%. A really positive session overnight, as investors took the data as a sign the worst of high inflation may finally be behind us.

What to watch today:

• The Australian market is set to finish the week nicely, with the SPI futures suggesting the market will rise 2.31% at the open this morning.
•  In commodities, oil is slightly higher and starting to regain the week’s losses, after losing more than 7% in the past three sessions. Gold has jumped almost 3% higher, after the inflation reading pushed the dollar higher. And iron ore is trading 0.6% higher at US$91.50 per tonne.
• Accent Group (ASX:AX1) is set to hold its AGM today.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter maintain a Buy rating on Pendal (ASX:PDL). They say the short-term driver of Pendal’s share price is almost certainly whether PDL will be acquired by Perpetual (ASX:PPT). And this is currently in balance. PPT management have rejected the approaches so far from Regal Partners (ASX:RPL), however PPT’s share price is just under $33, which implies the market expects a higher offer, from another company perhaps, with a good chance of success. Bell Potter say that financial logic would point to the $33 per share in cash offered by the consortium for PPT. However, this offer looks opportunistic and driven by sell off in PPT’s share price down to $23 in October. When comparing PPT’s historic enterprise value over EBITDA ratio, the $33 offered is not a massive premium in Bell Potter’s opinion. They have reduced their price target from $5.90 to $4.90 and at its current share price of $3.91, this implies 25.3% share price growth in a year.
• Trading Central have identified a bearish signal in JB Hi Fi (ASX:JBH) indicating that the stock price may fall from the close of $42.12 to the range of $35.25 to $36.75 over 28 days, according to the standard principles of technical analysis.