Steve Daghlian

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Mining stocks just continue to eat away at the March slump.

Good afternoon, I'm Steve Daglian.

It's Thursday the 7th of May.

Welcome to the CommSec Market Update.

Yeah, so we're still down roughly 4.5% since the conflict in the Middle East actually started, but certainly a good couple of sessions.

We've had strong gains from the US, which hit another record high overnight.

Oil prices have gone backwards, which is generally helpful for markets.

It was down about 7%, again, boosted by more encouraging signs on the Middle East conflict at the moment.

Yeah, and Trump was quoted last night saying that Iran wants to make a deal, that they've had very good talks over the last 24 hours, that it's very possible that they'll make a deal as well.

So we'll see how long this lasts.

But certainly any signs that they're heading in the right direction is likely to be received well by markets.

And you're right to point out that that's probably most helpful for our market.

But as far as the US is concerned, it's largely those US earnings which have been flowing through from the likes of chip makers like AMD, Supermicro, also Uber.

All of these stocks came out with solid earnings last night.

And economic data was largely positive as well on the jobs front.

If we look at our market today, certainly energy stocks are under quite a bit of pressure because of the oil price decline, as you rightfully pointed out.

But we are seeing some losses elsewhere.

Healthcare stocks, utilities, telcos, they're all down.

The rest of the market is actually lifting.