Markets Overview
- ASX SPI 200 futures up 0.7% to 7,280.00
- Dow Average little changed at 34,377.70
- Aussie up 0.4% to 0.7379 per US$
- U.S. 10-year yield fell 4.1bps to 1.5368%
- Australia 3-year bond yield fell 2bps to 0.55%
- Australia 10-year bond yield fell 3bps to 1.69%
- Gold spot up 1.8% to $1,792.03
- Brent futures down 0.2% to $83.28/bbl
Economic Events
- 9am: (AU) RBA’s Debelle Gives Speech at Conference
- 10:30am: (AU) Australia to Sell A$1 Billion 189-Day Bills
- 10:30am: (AU) Australia to Sell A$1 Billion 98-Day Bills
- 11am: (AU) Oct. Consumer Inflation Expectation, prior 4.4%
- 11:30am: (AU) Sept. Part Time Employment Change, prior -78,200
- 11:30am: (AU) Sept. Full Time Employment Change, prior -68,000
- 11:30am: (AU) Sept. Participation Rate, est. 64.7%, prior 65.2%
- 11:30am: (AU) Sept. Employment Change, est. -110,000, prior -146,300
- 11:30am: (AU) Sept. Unemployment Rate, est. 4.8%, prior 4.5%
Technology shares climbed amid lower Treasury yields after data showing inflation is running hot lifted companies seen as better equipped to pass on higher costs to consumers without harming their businesses.
Traders also assessed minutes of the Federal Reserve’s latest policy meeting, with officials broadly agreeing they should start reducing stimulus in mid-November or mid-December amid increasing concern over inflation. Central bankers discussed an illustrative tapering path featuring “monthly reductions in the pace of asset purchases, by $10 billion in the case of Treasury securities and $5 billion in the case of agency mortgage-backed securities.”
Other News
Signature whistles are sounds made by dolphins, used to identify different individuals.
Dolphin calves will eventually make their own individual whistle, but in the first stages of life, they use their mother’s.
In a previous study, researchers observed a dolphin mother at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in California, who gave birth to a dolphin baby called Mira in 2014.
They recorded 80 hours of sounds from the mother, baby, and other dolphins in the enclosure, during the two months before birth, and two months after birth.
The recordings showed that the mother dolphin began increasing her signature whistle two weeks before birth, and continued to do so for two weeks after birth, before tapering off.
In contrast, the other dolphins in the enclosure did not produce their own signature whistle at very high rates during this time.
The show’s narrator Dame Sian Phillips, said: ‘Bottlenose dolphins are highly sociable, the group are in constant communication.
‘Each dolphin has its own unique signature whistle and the Cardigan Bay dolphins may have their very own dialect.
‘Their whistles are at a higher frequency than those recorded anywhere else in the world.’
Researchers have previously discovered the Cardigan Bay dolphins have different sounding whistles to other pods found around the UK.
A 2007 study was made by marine scientist Ronan Hickey, of the University of Wales in Bangor, and experts from the Shannon Dolphin Foundation in Ireland.
They digitised and analysed 1,882 whistles from 120 Irish Sea dolphins to find the Welsh dolphins had their own accent.
Speaking at the time, project leader Dr Simon Berrow said: ‘We’re trying to associate whistle types with different forms of behaviour — like foraging, resting, socialising and communicating with their young.
‘One was distinctive and exclusive to the dolphins of Cardigan Bay.
‘We’re really building up a dictionary of a whole range of sounds. There are whistles, clicks, barks, groans and a gunshot sound which they might use to stun their prey.’
The discovery followed studies showing that cows moo in regional accents and bird calls vary across the country.
