Australian Investment Blog

WHAT MATTERED TODAY

A more lethargic session today to cap off a fairly volatile week for equities. While the market failed to grab the full extent of the positive overseas lead, the aggressive selling that played out mid-week in our market wasn’t there either, and we simply drifted in and out of positive territory to end a tad lower.

Overall, the index closed down -5 points or -0.09% today to 5730 and was down 3.23% on the week. Dow Futures are trading down 55 points / -0.21%.

ASX 200 Chart

ASX 200 Chart

CATCHING OUR EYE

Broker Moves;

RATINGS CHANGES:

· Factor Therapeutics (FTT AU): Factor Therapeutics Cut to Reduce at Morgans Financial; PT A$0

· MACA (MLD AU): MACA Downgraded to Speculative Buy at Hartleys Ltd; PT A$1.27

Sectors this week;

Stocks this week;

During the week we covered a diverse range of topics in our notes, with a number of actionable insights…

Macquarie (ASX:MQG) was strong early but failed to hold gains this afternoon to close up just 19c at $119.00 after upgrading earnings guidance again, although this is not new news Read More

Macquarie (MQG) Chart

Why we’d sell WAM; The main Listed Investment Company under the Wilsons banner is ASX:WAM and its clearly popular with income investors, delivering a current dividend yield of around 6.5% fully franked. Chris Stott, the Chief Investment Officer for the group has recently resigned to spend more time with family. Simply put, the WAM premium is too high for such a high profile loss of personal while paying a 14% premium for a 30% cash weighting simply does not make sense to us; Read More

Healthscope (ASX:HSO), a stock we own in the Growth Portfolio is now being stalked by two suitors with Brookfield coming to the table on Monday with a revised bid. As we suggested after the first BGH bid was made,we expect there is more to play out for HSO in the weeks / months ahead. While we doubt the $2.36 bid will get up, the purchase of additional stock by BGH suggests they’re the ‘real deal. Read More

Is the new Westpac Hybrid worth buying; Earlier in the week we met with Westpac regarding a new Hybrid security being issued in part to refinance an existing security (WBCPD). The existing security has $1.4b on issue and WBC say they’ll issue a new security worth $750m with the ability to do more or less. Read More

Appen (ASX:APX) – upgrades earnings; On a day where much of the market was heading lower, one stock stood out with Appen jumping higher yesterday thanks to upgraded earnings guidance . We discussed Appen (ASX:APX) in a number of notes this week; Read More on their upgrade here while LiveWire Markets picked up one of our broader articles which touched on Appen and part of a wider article on growth stocks. Read More

Lend Lease (ASX:LLC) was on the other side of the ledger with an earnings downgrade. While we think a spin out of the engineering division makes sense, and could well be underway from the comments of management today, however if problematic projects remain underway, further pain could well be likely. We have no interest in LLC at current levels. Read more

Agricultural stocks were in focus this week with Elders (ASX:ELD) hitting it out of the park with better than expected full year numbers, while we also saw Ruralco Holdings (ASX:RHL) beat expectations; We covered Elders here and Rural Co here

OUR CALLS

No changes the portfolios today.

Watch out for the weekend report. Have a great night,

James / Harry & the Market Matters Team

Disclosure

Market Matters may hold stocks mentioned in this report. Subscribers can view a full list of holdings on the website by clicking here. Positions are updated each Friday, or after the session when positions are traded.

Disclaimer

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