Markets Overview

  • ASX SPI 200 futures up 0.7% to 7,244.00
  • Dow Average up 1.0% to 34,051.93
  • Aussie up 0.6% to 0.6644 per US$
  • U.S. 10-year yield fell 7.5bps to 3.7541%
  • Australia 3-year bond yield rose 2.7 bps to 3.23%
  • Australia 10-year bond yield rose 0.8 bps to 3.59%
  • Gold spot little changed at $1,738.53
  • Brent futures up 1.2% to $88.52/bbl

Economic Events

  • 09:00: (AU) Nov. S&P Global Australia PMI Servi, prior 49.3
  • 09:00: (AU) Nov. S&P Global Australia PMI Mfg, prior 52.7
  • 09:00: (AU) Nov. S&P Global Australia PMI Compo, prior 49.8
  • 11:00: (AU) Australia to Sell A$900 Million 1.25% 2032 Bonds

Australia’s central bank will pay “close attention” to household spending, wage and price setting behavior and the global economy as it decides how fast and how far to raise interest rates, Governor Philip Lowe said.

Other News

In April 1992, Vanessa Williams’ “Save the Best for Last” topped the Billboard 100, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was running for the White House, “Who’s the Boss?” aired its final episode, and the babies born to Rachel and Philip Ridgeway a couple of weeks ago were frozen as embryos.

Born on October 31, Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born from what may be the longest-frozen embryos to ever result in a live birth, according to the National Embryo Donation Center.

The previous known record holder was Molly Gibson, born in 2020 from an embryo that had been frozen for nearly 27 years. Molly took the record from her sister Emma, who was born from an embryo that had been frozen for 24 years.

It’s possible an older frozen embryo may have been used; although the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks success rates and data around reproductive technologies, it does not track how long embryos have been frozen. But there’s no evidence of an older embryo resulting in a live birth.

The embryos were created for an anonymous married couple using in-vitro fertilization. The husband was in his early 50s, and they used a 34-year-old egg donor.

The embryos were frozen on April 22, 1992.

For nearly three decades, they sat in storage on tiny straws kept in liquid nitrogen at nearly 200 degrees below zero, in a device that looks much like a propane tank.

The embryos were kept at a fertility lab on the West Coast until 2007, when the couple who created them donated the embryos to the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, in hopes another couple might be able to use them. The five embryos were overnighted in specially outfitted tanks to Knoxville, said Dr. John Gordon, the Ridgeways’ doctor.

(CNN News)