Sydney, Oct 30, 2007 (ABN Newswire) - Aussie shares look set to post further gains this morning following a positive lead on Wall Street, with record oil prices and strong gold prices likely to lift resource firms.

The S&P/ASX200 finished 92 points stronger to 6,792 yesterday. On the futures market the SPI200 is up 18.

Turning to currencies, at 8:50 AM the Aussie dollar is buying 92.33 US cents, on the crosses the dollar is buying 105.87 yen, 64.03 Euro cents, and 44.77 British pence.

The full report is available at the following video and audio links.

Video Link

http://abnnewswire.net/fnnlnk/03A54V0D


Audio Link

http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/GMO94C17


Making the news this morning is Wide Bay Australia shares which were unchanged yesterday at $12.80 and announced late yesterday a $56.6 million takeover offer for Mackay Permanent Building Society.

Bank of Queensland has previously offered a cash bid of $8.25 per Mackay share
plus a one dollar final dividend and an alternative scrip offer of half one of its shares for each MacKay share. However Wide Bay Managing Director Ron Hancock said that if MacKay Permanent Building Society shareholders wish to receive cash for their shares, the choice is simple. Wide Bay has managed increasing net profit results for the last four years.

Macquarie DDR management, the manager of Macquarie DDR Trust which fell 1.28% yesterday to $1.16, has announced that its chief executive Nick Ridgewell has resigned from his position. Mr Ridgewell is taking up a position with Morgan Fund Management to head its Asian property business. Macquarie DDR management are now on the lookout for a replacement chief. Macquarie DDR trust had its stongest profit result in 2005.

The S&P ASX top 200 company trading ex-dividend today is Zinifex with a 70 cent, 100% franked dividend to be paid on the 16th of November.

To International Markets:

US Markets rallied on positive earnings reports and the likelyhood of an interest rate cut this week.

The Dow Jones Industrials gained 64 points to 13870.26, the S&P500 gained 6 to 1540.98 and the NASDAQ firmed 13 to 2817.

European markets were stronger; Londons FTSE was up 44.7 to 6706, Paris gained 41 to 5836 and Frankfurt advanced 61 to 8009.67.

To Asian Markets where Hong Kong's Hang Seng soared 1181 to 31586.9, Tokyo's Nikkei was up 192 points to 16698 and China's SSE Composite was up 158 points to 5748.

Back to the US; Gold ended $5.10 stronger to US$792.60 an ounce for the spot contract on CMX, Silver was up $0.15 to $14.43 and Copper fell $0.02 to $3.52.

Finally Oil advanced $1.67 to US$93.53 a barrel for december light crude in New York.


Source: Finance News Network © 2007 http://www.finnewsnetwork.com.au

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