Australian shares are seen rising on Wednesday, likely buoyed by Wall Street's rally to fresh record highs overnight and on gains for companies with large exposure to the U.S. market after the Australian dollar slid to an 11-month low.
_0">* Local share price index futures rose 0.6 percent, a 34-point premium to the underlying S&P/ASX 200 index close. The benchmark edged 0.2 percent higher to notch a fresh five-year closing high on Tuesday.
* New Zealand's benchmark NZX 50 index was trading mostly flat in the early morning.
* Australia's struggling Labor government on Tuesday used the last budget before national elections to delay a long-promised return to surplus, blaming a stubbornly high Australian dollar and lower commodity prices for a dramatic fall in revenues.
* The Aussie extended losses to $0.9896 after touching a new 11-month low overnight. The currency has fallen about 4 percent in the past 10 days.
* U.S. Stocks rallied to fresh highs on Tuesday as investors picked up large-cap companies' shares on expectations that central bank stimulus will help propel the rally further.
* Copper fell more than 2 percent on Tuesday as poor factory output data from China, the top user of the metal, fed fears that demand growth was stalling as copper inventories rose.
* Gold fell for a fourth consecutive session, its longest losing streak in over two months, as economic optimism and another intraday record high in U.S. equities sapped bullion's safe-haven appeal.
* Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the country's top lender by market value, on Wednesday posted an 8.57 percent rise in third-quarter cash profit to A$1.9 billion ($1.88 billion), helped by higher net interest margin.
* Australia-Wage inflation data for the first quarter is due out later on Wednesday. Expectations are for wage inflation to be tame due in part to a soft labour market, keeping the overall inflation picture benign.
----------------------MARKET SNAPSHOT @ 2309 GMT ------------
INSTRUMENT LAST PCT CHG NET CHG S&P 500 1650.34 1.01% 16.570 USD/JPY 102.25 -0.1% -0.100 10-YR US TSY YLD 1.9818 -- 0.000 SPOT GOLD 1426.34 0.07% 0.950 US CRUDE 94.32 0.12% 0.110 DOW JONES 15215.25 0.82% 123.57 ASIA ADRS 147.03 -0.23% -0.34 -------------------------------------------------------------
* Wall St jumps as banks lead indexes to new highs * Brent oil prices fall in light trading * Gold down on economic optimism, ETF holdings steady * Copper slips on China growth concerns, inventories
For a digest of the day's business stories in Australian newspapers, double click on
_0">(Australia/New Zealand bureaux; +61 2 9373 1800/+64 4 471 4234)
_1">(Reporting by Thuy Ong; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
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