Steve Daghlian

The Wall Street Journal in the United States reported that the Pentagon is working to secure supplies of heavy rare earths with Linus producing in Malaysia to reduce its dependence in China.

Reminder that China very much dominates in the rare earth market, basically controlling almost the entire market there.

But the US has tried to diversify things and not be as reliant there.

So that's been helpful for certain stocks like Linus as well.

So radars are used in lots of stuff, but it's critical for use in military equipment like fighter jets, missile guidance systems, other types of systems like that as well as far as radar systems are concerned.

And Linus is in the process of building out quite a bit of infrastructure in Malaysia at the moment.

Briefly, Beach Energy is

down about 0.8%.

It's underperforming other energy stocks today, basically downgraded guidance for how much it reckons it's going to produce over the course of the year, downgrading it by about 5%, which it's blamed in part on some heavy rainfall in central Australia.

So it hasn't been able, I guess, to benefit in full from the higher prices that we've seen recently.

Yeah, and that's going to be out at 11.30am Sydney time.

It's going to be a very important one, of course, ahead of the Reserve Bank's next interest rate decision, which is going to come next Tuesday, essentially.

And that will be at 2.30pm Sydney time.

So the hotter this number is, the more likely we are to get, I guess, a rate hike next week.

We've already got roughly a 76% chance of a lift next Tuesday.

That's what markets are currently pricing in.

Absolutely.

So plenty to watch.

I think we'll leave it at that, but we'll catch you tomorrow and make sure you tune in to The Morning Podcast with James tomorrow.

This podcast is prepared, approved and distributed in Australia by Commonwealth Securities Limited, ABN 60067254399, AFSL 238814.