Laura Bessarati

I mentioned that Aussie gold miners have been following gold prices higher right at the outset, and this is, of course, on the prospect of US-Iran agreements.

Now, we saw the gold subsector drop by 24% over the course of March, which was when our market was most impacted by the conflict.

Now, it did track a 12% drop in gold prices over the month of March as well, but we have seen them slowly clawing back losses with the gold subindex up

four and a half percent today, and it's improved by something like six percent over the month so far.

Among the top performers today has been Orica.

This is a company that provides...

explosives and blasting services for the mining industry.

Now, this is after it narrowed its half-year losses from $89 million in the first half of 2025 to a loss of $600,000 this half.

So it also upped its dividend from the same time last year, up 14% to $0.285 per share.

saying the results were supported by strong demand for its higher-end products and technology, as well as a solid gold and copper markets and disciplined cost management as well.

So, Orica shares up in the order of 8% today.

Yeah.

And NAB is trading ex-dividend.

So its share price is actually the only one of the major banks that are falling.

It's down 1.3% and they're set to pay $0.85 per share on the 2nd of July for their interim dividend.

And tonight it looks like it's going to be a flat start to trade for Wall Street, but of course that's after hitting a record high last night as we spoke about.

And then we have tomorrow on the local front, Westpac will be trading ex-dividends, so its share price could be a bit of a weight.

We have full year results out from Macquarie Group and a few more quarterlies to come, including Block Inc, QBE, News Corp and REA Group.

And the RBA just raised rates for a third straight meeting.

Are there more hikes to come?