Markets Overview
- ASX SPI 200 futures up 0.5% to 7,337.00
- Dow Average down 0.4% to 34,935.47
- FTSE 100 down 0.7% to 7,032.30
- Euro down 0.2% to $1.1869
- Aussie down 0.8% to 0.7335 per US$
- U.S. 10-year yield fell 4.6bps to 1.2223%
- Australia 3-year bond yield rose 1bp to 0.24%
- Australia 10-year bond yield rose 3bps to 1.18%
- Gold spot down 0.8% to $1,814.19
- Brent futures up 0.4% to $75.41/bbl
Economic Events
- 9am: (AU) July Markit Australia PMI Mfg, prior 56.8
- 10am: (AU) July CoreLogic House Px MoM, prior 1.9%
- 11am: (AU) July Melbourne Institute Inflation, prior 0.4%
- 11am: (AU) July Melbourne Institute Inflation, prior 3.0%
- 11:30am: (AU) July ANZ Job Advertisements MoM, prior 3.0%
Other News
A New York federal court has ordered US craft store Hobby Lobby to forfeit an ancient artifact purchased at a 2014 auction that “originated in the area of modern-day Iraq and entered the United States contrary to federal law,” the Justice Department announced Tuesday. The artifact — known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet — is inscribed with a portion of “Gilgamesh,” an epic poem considered one of the world’s oldest works of literature. In 2014, Hobby Lobby, a privately owned arts and crafts retailer whose president is also the chairman of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, bought the clay tablet for display in the museum from an international auction house for $1,674,000. The museum and Hobby Lobby both asked the auction house about the tablet’s origin, but the auction house withheld that information and lied in saying that the antiquities dealer had confirmed the details of provenance, according to the Justice Department, which has sought to return to artifact to Iraq. Law enforcement agents seized the tablet from the museum in 2019. The Museum of the Bible has expressed its support for the government’s effort to return the artifact to Iraq.
