ASX Today: Losses ahead as inflation fears linger
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Futures action points to further down-pressure on the Australian share market after inflation worries fuelled a night of volatile losses on Wall Street.
ASX futures declined 45 points or 0.64 per cent after the Dow endured its worst night since February.
The
S&P/ASX 200 skidded 76 points or 1.06 per cent yesterday to its heaviest loss in 11 weeks.
Wall Street
Inflation jitters fuelled a wild night on Wall Street before a mid-session reversal in growth stocks. The
Nasdaq Composite fell 2.2 per cent to lead the initial sell-off, but finished just 12 points or 0.09 per cent in the red amid speculation about short-covering ahead of tonight s consumer prices report.
Here are my top stocks to buy now for my 2021 Stocks and Shares ISA Image source: Getty Images
The Stocks and Shares ISA is a great investment vehicle enabled by the government. It allows me to build up a pot of investments within a specific account that is free from capital gains tax. This tax would normally be charged when I fill out my tax return each year. However, due to my ISA, I can buy and sell without needing to worry myself about it. With the new ISA year having begun in April, here are the stocks I’m looking at for my 2021 allocation.
Two more British firms have been targeted by foreign predators in the latest flurry of pandemic plundering.
Defence and aerospace group Meggitt is being circled by US rival Woodward, in a move that threatens to further pummel Britain s world-leading engineering industry.
And St Modwen Properties has received a £1.2billion offer from another American firm, private equity giant Blackstone.
Bombardment: Meggitt s clients include aerospace giants BAE Systems, Boeing and Lockheed Martin
It is the second US private equity approach in just two days after infrastructure group John Laing revealed it was in talks with KKR.
Foreign bidders have swooped on a string of UK firms since the pandemic broke out – including the AA, G4S, power generator provider Aggreko and superyacht servicer GYG.
Introduction – what are SPACs?
A Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or ‘
SPAC,’ is a company created with cash only for the purpose of acquiring one or more businesses (the UK ‘blank-check company’ is very similar). SPACs are incorporated by a team of sponsors and initially raise capital through the public markets more quickly than a traditional IPO. Once capital has been raised, the sponsors seek to identify one or more private companies to purchase. The sponsors will generally target a specific industry or sector in which they have particular expertise. Once identified and a transaction is agreed, the SPAC will be combined with the target (this is known as a de-SPAC merger). In effect, this process is a reverse merger through which the private target becomes the resulting public company.