Prices current around 4:15pm AEDT.
Updates on the major ASX indices:
It’s been real, but we’ve got to leave it here for the day on the blog.
But! If you’re after more business news (and honestly, who could blame you?) here’s a little preview of what’s coming up on The Business tonight:
Catch The Business on ABC News at 8:45pm AEDT, after the late news on ABC TV, and anytime on ABC iview.
As for the blog, we’ll be back to do it all again bright and early tomorrow — see you then!
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Any thoughts on the IMF’s report that Australian inflation next year will be close to the highest in the developed world, second only to the Slovak Republic?
– Simon Connor
Hi Simon,
We touched on the IMF’s report earlier in the blog, but my indefatigable colleague Gareth Hutchens has been taking a closer look at the report and making sense of it in his trademark fashion.
Even better, he’s put virtual pen to virtual paper — you can give it a read below.
After a somewhat subdued afternoon of trade, the ASX 200 has closed 0.1% higher on Wednesday to 8,216 points.
On the sectors front, it was a mixed end — five of the 11 ended in positive territory, with consumer staples gaining the most (+1.4%), followed by consumer discretionary (+0.4%), basic materials (+0.3%), financials (+0.2%) and real estate (+0.1%).
Specifically, it was strong gains by Woolworths and Coles (+1.6% and +1.4% respectively) that buoyed consumer staples into being the top performing sector.
As for the top performing stocks though, it was far and away Qantas’s day — while gold miners rode the highs of a higher gold price.
While at the other end, scandal around MinRes saw it lead the losses:
About 300 Qantas engineers in Melbourne and Brisbane have walked off the job for 24 hours over stalled pay negotiations.
Heavy maintenance engineers based in Brisbane began their strike at 1:30am, before engine components maintenance engineers followed suit in Melbourne at 9am.
Both groups of workers held rallies outside of Brisbane and Melbourne’s international terminals earlier today.
The current enterprise agreement for the engineers expired at the end of June, and negotiations for a new one have hit a roadblock.
As AAP reports, the Qantas Engineers’ Alliance (which is made up of three unions) want a 5% pay rise per year, with a 15% increase in the first year to compensate for “wage freezes and as an industry catch-up payment” for the past three-and-a-half years.
The strike by the engineers today comes after more than 1,000 Qantas engineers walked off the job for two hours in September at major airports around the country.
In a statement, Qantas says it has put contingencies in place and doesn’t expect the strikes to affect customers.
“There’s been some industrial action by engineers since late September and so far we’ve been able to successfully ensure it hasn’t resulted in any flight delays or cancellations,” a spokesperson said.
“Our teams continue to do a great job helping customers get to their destination safely.”
Haven’t heard much from the Treasurer latley last time he spoke his body language was very negative any news
– Chrisso
Hi Chrisso,
Rest assured that Jim Chalmers is still around — he was speaking to Radio National Breakfast on Friday (you can listen back to that interview here).
As for where he is this week, I went to the experts — and that’s my colleagues down at Parliament House in Canberra.
Turns out, the treasurer is travelling to the United States for annual meetings at the G20, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
The meetings are taking place in Washington DC, and he’ll be sitting down with US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Japan’s new Finance Minister Katsonobu Kato, to name a few.
“These meetings will provide important perspectives on the global outlook and allow us to make further progress at home and with our key international partners,” Mr Chalmers said.
If you’re interested, you can read his full release about the meetings by following this link.
Coles and Woolworths have told the Federal Court they plan to fight allegations that they broke consumer law by misleading customers with offers of fake discounts.
Last month the ACCC announced it was suing the supermarket giants, alleging the duo had misled shoppers by increasing the prices on hundreds of items before dropping them as part of their respective “Down Down” and “Prices Dropped” campaigns.
Lawyers for both the supermarkets claimed that the price increases were at the request of suppliers who were dealing with rising costs.
Appearing in the Federal Court in Melbourne earlier today, Woolworths’ lawyer Cameron Moore said the supermarket did not increase prices of its own volition.
“The suggestion is that Woolworths initiated temporary price spikes and that’s not correct factually,” he said.
“We say factually, the ACCC’s case is misconceived.”
Coles’ lawyer John Sheahan also said the case brought by the consumer watchdog was not as simple as it seemed on the surface, and warned the case’s outcome could significantly affect the whole industry.
Both Coles and Woolworths have until November 29 to file a written response to the ACCC’s allegations, before returning to court in December. — with AAP
It may only be Wednesday, but it’s already been a big week for Qantas — and it’s just gotten even bigger.
The airline’s share price has cracked an all-time high of $7.83 after gaining as much as 3.6% during trade today.
The reason? Analysts at Jefferies raised their price target on the airline to $10.53 (up from $7.98), stating that rising strong demand for domestic and international travel has lifted expectations of a dividend payment when it reports its first-half earnings in February next year.
Lower fuel costs thanks to a slowdown in oil prices is also contributing to the price target hike, the analysts noted.
Currently, Qantas is on track for its strongest session since the end of August — and it’s one of the top performers on the local market today.
Good news for a company that’s got its AGM on Friday in Hobart…
As we head into the afternoon session, the ASX 200 is still trading higher — it’s currently up 0.2% to 8,218 points as of 12:30pm AEDT.
(You can check live figures at the top of the blog.)
It’s a mixed bag on the sectors front, with six out of the 11 in positive territory.
Consumer staples is the strongest performer (+1.2%) followed by consumer discretionary (+0.7).
At the other end of the scale though, it’s education that’s dragging (-1.4%), followed by technology (-0.3%).
As far as individual stocks are concerned, here’s the top performers:
While those with the biggest losses so far:
Talk about short and sweet (and not the Sabrina Carpenter tour).
The final question put to ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court was about Mineral Resources and Chris Ellison amid reports of tax evasion.
Ms Court replied that she was aware of the reports, but she would not comment on it any further.
(She also gave the same response when asked if ASIC was looking at the situation around WiseTech.)
ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court is taking questions, and has been expanding on the scale of the discounts it claims some customers missed out on.
“These discounts were material … for some consumers, [they were] in the hundreds of dollars,” she says.
“In the current environment, every little bit counts.”
She also confirms that ASIC is seeking penalties over the conduct, but did not elaborate on the potential scale.
“This kind of conduct is in a similar kind of ballpark to others we’ve had in court,” she says.
Those “other” cases include last year’s case against IAL, which was penalised $40 million, and action against RACQ which resulted in a $10 million penalty.
ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court is speaking now and began with a short statement.
She says that ASIC is suing QBE, alleging it misled its customers on pricing discounts on a wide range of insurance products that affected more than half a million people.
ASIC alleges that QBE promised “at least” 500,000 customers pricing discounts for their loyalty in their renewal notices.
“What these were in effect were promises to reward customers for their loyalty to QBE and giving them lower premiums in response,” she says.
“But ASIC alleges the premiums charged were inconsistent with the discounts promised by QBE across a wide range of products, including home, contents, car, caravan and others.
“What this meant is some customers who were promised discounts if they renewed their policies, did not receive their discounts.
“it is unacceptable.”
We’re expecting to hear shortly from ASIC regarding this morning’s announcement that it’s suing QBE Insurance for allegedly misleading customers about the value of discounts offered on certain general insurance products.
News of the action being taken by the corporate regulator has resulted in QBE shares shedding around 1% so far during trade today.
ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court will front a press conference in Sydney any moment now — I’ll be bringing that to you live right here on the blog.
In the meantime, you can read more about the legal action below:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted Australia is heading towards an economy with inflation remaining above 3% at the end of 2025.
And will exceed all advanced economies except Slovakia’s.
This worrisome prediction is being explored by our reporter Gareth Hutchens who will have an update out later today so stay tuned.
The ASX 200 has started the day slightly higher after a sharp drop yesterday.
Consumer Non-Cyclicals (+0.9%) and basic materials (+0.8%) sectors were leading the charge.
Education, healthcare and tech were all opened lower.
Here are some of the top and bottom movers at the open.
Another fight against the power of AI has emerged in the US.
News Corp’s New York Post and the Dow Jones are suing search AI company Perplexity alleging massive copyright infringement.
Perplexity acts like a search engine and presents results written out in its own words with sources linking to other sites, rather than a string of links like Google.
The Dow and NYP have said in a federal lawsuit filed on Monday in New York:
“Perplexity attempts to accomplish this by engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers’ copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders.
“This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity’s brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce.”
The lawsuit alleges that in July, the companies put Perplexity on notice “… of the legal issues raised by Perplexity’s unauthorized use of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works and offering to discuss a potential licensing deal. Perplexity did not bother to respond.”
Variety has published a copy of the lawsuit if you want to take a read.
I think you have a typo with the price of Bitcoin. I’d be backing up the truck if it was at 26k.
– James
Thanks James! Sorry everyone we had a typo with the Bitcoin price, it’s at $US67,603 – not $US26k! Apologies to the crypto fam.
Not surprised that ASIC is investigating QBE. When they outsourced their Home Insurance to some other company, I knew it was going to be difficult. I even got a Spam email from the mob who took them over during Lockdown. Luckily I occasionally look at my Spam and Junk mail to check them, or I’d have had no house and contents Insurance… Scary stuff!
– Merrowyn
Thanks for the comment Merrowyn – insurance is really coming under the spotlight right now isn’t it
If you are please feel free to shoot me an email at Clayton.Rachel@abc.net.au as we follow up on the ASIC action being taken against the insurance company.
The National Anti-Scam Centre says it’s detected a new bulk extortion email campaign targeting Australians.
There’s been hundreds of reports to Scamwatch in the past week of people receiving emails from criminals claiming to compromising images or videos by hacking into a computer or webcam.
(I received one of these emails myself!)
There’s no evidence the people sending these emails actually have access to your webcam or computer.
The ACCC’s Catriona Lowe says:
“We are issuing this urgent alert to bring this concerted scam campaign to the attention of the public. While we should always be vigilant about scams, people need to be especially alert to this emerging trend”.
How does it work?
The scammers send an email threatening to release compromising material if they are not paid a certain amount of cryptocurrency to a specified address.
The emails include personal details of the recipients, such as birth dates and addresses, which are provided to make the scam more convincing and intimidate those individuals into sending money.
They likely nabbed your personal details from previous data breaches — of which there have been too many to count
“The fictional threats in these emails combined with the inclusion of people’s personal data are intended to terrify the individual reading it. It’s extortion and it’s a crime,” Ms Lowe said.
“People should ignore these spam emails and be aware that the recent volume of reports of this scam suggest it is a large-scale campaign. The National Anti-Scam Centre is working with partner organisations, including law enforcement and IDCARE, to disrupt this scam and ensure victims have access to support.”
