Local markets down despite majority government confidence

The ASX is down despite the stable promise of a Labor majority government, while international markets have opened optimistically.

Transcript

00:00Well, after Labor's landslide victory over the weekend, it was widely expected the stock

00:06market would actually do well today, given minority government and policy uncertainty

00:11are no longer worrying them.

00:14No such luck as the All Lords dropped 1%, partly because of the sharp fall in Westpac's

00:19share price after the bank announced a $3.3 billion half-year profit, which apparently

00:25wasn't good enough because it was a 1% drop compared to last year's result.

00:30The market was also dragged down by oil and gas companies, especially after the price

00:35of crude oil suffered a pretty hefty 3% drop to its lowest level in more than four years.

00:41If only the same thing happened to petrol prices here.

00:44Now the reason why oil fell was because the world's biggest producers, Russia, Saudi Arabia

00:49and the OPEC plus cartel agreed to majorly ramp up production by an extra 400,000 barrels

00:55a day, despite fears of a US recession and weaker demand for fuel worldwide.

01:02Overseas, it was a strong day for Wall Street, Europe and most Asian markets, after China said

01:07it was approached by the US to begin negotiations to scale back their trade war.

01:12And that led to a big jump for the Aussie dollar.

01:15At 64.7 US cents, that's the highest it's been all year.

01:19But things aren't looking so rosy for Australia's film industry, after Donald Trump said he'll

01:24impose a 100% tariff on movies brought into America that are produced in, quote, foreign

01:30lands.

01:32He's not happy that Hollywood films are increasingly being filmed overseas, lured by generous tax

01:37breaks like the Australian government's 30% location offset.

01:41Now given America is a major market for Australian film, this is probably going to hurt.