Australian market expected to open higher 7/11/19

Australian shares fell steadily through the day, snapping a three-session push higher. Settling near the day’s low, the S&P/ASX 200 dropped 0.6% to 6660.2. Most industry sectors were weaker, led by technology and industrial stocks. Still, gains by miners BHP and South32 and modest recoveries by Commonwealth Bank and Westpac helped soften the day’s drop. Thursday will be a busy day for the market, with full-year results due from

National Australia Bank and quarterly numbers from Xero and James Hardie, while BHP, Downer, Flight Centre and Spark each hold annual shareholders’ meetings.  

U.S. stocks slipped intraday, led by a slump in energy shares, after major indexes notched a string of records in recent sessions.  

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 fell less than 0.1%, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.3%.  

All three indexes have set new highs this week, driven by optimism about the potential for a partial trade deal between the U.S. and China, easing monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and a better-than-feared corporate-earnings season.  

 Shares of HP jumped 8.6% after The Wall Street Journal reported that Xerox Holdings is considering making a cash-and-stock offer for the personal-computer maker. Xerox shares rose 3.6%.  

Gold futures settled higher, a day after the precious metal lost its grip on the psychologically significant $1,500 mark amid gains in stocks, yields and a firmer U.S. dollar – all headwinds for the commodity.  

Tuesday’s dip marked the first time in four sessions that the metal finished below $1,500, a level seen by technical analysts as a dividing line between bearish and bullish sentiment  

December silver, meanwhile, tacked on 3 cents, or 0.2%, at $17.598 an ounce, following a 2.8% slide that dragged gold’s sister metal to a two-week low.  

Oil futures finished lower after U.S. government data revealed that domestic crude supplies rose for a second week in a row, by nearly 8 million barrels.  

The WSJ Dollar Index, which measures the U.S. currency against a basket of 16 others, drops slightly to 90.79 from 90.80 yesterday after a two-day rally.  

The Stoxx Europe 600 index gained 0.1% on strength in the banking sector. Banks were among the biggest gainers in Europe.  UniCredit shares increased 2.3% as the Italian lender moved a bad-loan portfolio off its books in a transaction that it said would amount to a “significant risk transfer.”  

Meanwhile, the U.K.’s FTSE 250 index, which includes companies that are more exposed to the domestic economy than their larger peers, dropped 0.4% as political parties prepared for the Dec. 12 election with the outlook for Brexit as murky as ever.