AU Morning Wrap: ASX rises; miners advance on iron ore rally

Wall Street Summary
Wall Street's main indices finished mixed after the November jobs report appeared to bolster the case for another bumper interest rate hike this month. All three stock benchmarks slumped at least 1 per cent before steadying.

Payrolls increased by 263,000 last month, significantly more than the 200,000 anticipated by economists. Wages data also came in hotter than expected at +0.6 per cent for the month, compared to the previous month. Unemployment held steady at 3.7 per cent.

Investors hoped the report would show a slowdown in the labour market to allow the Fed to reduce its current aggressive pace of rate hikes. The central bank meets next week for the last time this year.

Higher iron ore prices have boosted miners of the bulk commodity; Fortescue rose 2.1 per cent to $20.10, BHP firmed 1.6 per cent to $46.50 and Champion Iron climbed 1.3 per cent to $6.84.

Metcash dipped 0.2 per cent to $4.22 despite lifting its interim dividend and beating earnings expectations.

IGO fell 2.1 per cent to $16 after a fire impacted its Nova operation over the weekend.

Splitit jumped 8.3 per cent to 19.5¢ after it expanded its agreement with Google to bring its instalments solution to the Google Store in the US, Canada and Australia.

BHP and its UK business deny the claims in their entirety.

The company said a fire damaged the Nova power station in the early hours of Saturday morning. There were no injuries and all personnel were safe.

All operations at Nova were currently suspended, and IGO said it was working with its partner, Zenith Energy, to re-establish power supply.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner will investigate Australian Clinical Labs' Medlab Pathology business after patient data ended up on the dark web, as reported in October.

Splitit signed an initial agreement to provide Google with its instalment payment solutions in Japan in January 2021 that went live in April 2021.

The company declared an interim dividend of 11.5¢ a share, up 9.5 per cent on FY22 after reporting a 10.3 per cent increase in underlying EBIT to $255.1 million. Revenue rose 8.2 per cent to $7.7 billion for the six-month period.

Metcash reported a 9.1 per cent increase in underlying profit to $159.9 million. On a statutory basis, profit after tax was $125.7 million.

Dividends Paid: None

Commodities
• Iron ore futures 0.5% to US$106.55 a tonne.

"The most recently released data shows that daily crude steel output at large and medium-sized mills in China averaged 2 million tons during November 11 - 20. This is 1% more than was seen during the first ten days of the month and is up year-on-year by 14%." - Breakwave Advisors

"Overall, it remains encouraging that China's steel output has stayed well above last year's level. We remain of our view that China's steel output likely bottomed in late July." - Breakwave Advisors

• Oil snapped a three day rally. Prices were under pressure after a strong-than-expected nonfarm payroll report pushed the US dollar higher in early trade.

Over the weekend, OPEC+ decided to keep its oil production unchanged.

• Gold finished the session 0.3% lower, reversing an outsized 1.3% fall after the hot nonfarm payroll report.

"Gold has had a nice rally since early November and profit taking could settle in, but a significant pullback doesn't seem warranted. The economy is slowing down and inflation should steadily decline here and justify a pause in Fed rate hikes after the first quarter." - Oanda senior market analyst, Ed Moya