List of Australian blue chip stocks

Australian shares gained 0.6 percent on Wednesday led by blue chip miners and financials on strong resource price

The biggest Blur chip stocks traded on the ASX, in terms of their market capitalisation, include:

• BHP Billiton

• Commonwealth Bank of Australia

• Telstra Corporation

• Rio Tinto

• National Australia Bank

• Australia and New Zealand Banking Group

• Rio tinto

• Westpac

The only stock to do worse than the S&P/ASX 200 is Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd [ASX: HVN]. Even so, it’s a better-than-the-bank 8.3% gain.

The others have done much better: Qantas [ASX: QAN] up 36.1%; JB Hi-Fi [ASX: JBH] up 20.5%; Toll Holdings [ASX: TOL] up 25.3%; and Myer Holdings [ASX: MYR] up 37.1%.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index rose 27.1 points to trade at 4,977.3 by 2310 GMT. It fell 0.8 percent on Tuesday, its lowest close since February 7.

Budget 2015 Australian and Ion ore blues

The budget for 2015 in Australia is out , with tv channels, Property investors, Businessmen and the general public waiting with anxiousness to see what it brings. There is no doubt about it there is a deficit in the Australian economy, but its yet to be seen how this budget has been affected by the declining prices of the Iron ore industry and the doom and gloom climate in the oil and gas industry.

Australia's conservative government assumes the price of iron ore, the country's largest export, will average $US48 a ton in 2015-16, well below the $US60-per-ton estimate given late last year. The iron-ore price has collapsed to around $US55 per ton currently, down from a peak of $US185 per ton in 2011. The price hit a recent low of $US43 per ton in April. 

Budget Day 2015 Australia [12 May 2015]

Below are the links you will need to get a full bottle on all the budget news you can eat!

Government website - http://www.budget.gov.au/

BUDGET SPEECH 2015

Delivered on 12 May 2015 by
The Honourable J. B. Hockey MP
Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Australia
Link here - http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/speech/html/speech.htm

Excerpts from speech

To give you one example, around 1,000 people will now benefit each year from subsidised access to better treatments for certain types of melanoma. Some of these treatments have until now, cost up to $131,000 per course of therapy. Now they are accessible for all Australians.
The Age Pension will continue to increase, twice a year, this year, and every year — at the highest available indexation rate.
New $212 million Youth Transition to Work programme that will fund community workers, on the ground, in high youth unemployment areas.
$5 billion Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility which is the first major step in our plan for our great North.
NEWS + summaries from other media outlets & newspapers
Budget 2015: Joe Hockey delivers billions for small business, cracks down on welfare from http://www.abc.net.au/

· The key points:

- Joe Hockey pledges $5.5 billion for small businesses in second budget
- Small businesses get immediate 100% tax write off for assets costing less than $20,000
- Budget deficit doubles to $35 billion in 2015-16; deficit to fall to $7 billion by 2018-19
- Mining sector's contribution to economy slumps from 45% to 16% over next three years
- Crackdown on welfare fraud claws back $1.7 billion over forward estimates
- $1.2 billion for national security, including fight against Islamic State
- $300 million put aside for farmers battling drought
- No more tax-free working holidays for foreigners

Budget 2015 winners and losers

From http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget-2015
Winners
· Jobseekers over 50: Employers will receive up to $10,000 over 12 months, up from 2 years in the previous budget if they hire and keep an older worker.

· Widows: $900,000 over four years to exclude people who get the Widow Allowance from a one-week waiting period
Losers
· Welfare system defrauders: $1.7 billion saved from increased fraud prevention and debt recovery.
· Rich pensioners: $2.4 billion saved over five years by increasing asset test threshold and taper rate for the pension.
From
http://www2.deloitte.com/

Download the word cloud
2015 Federal Budget speech word cloud
http://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/federal-budget/articles/federal-budget-2015-2016.html?gclid=CJCGpKC0vMUCFQwJvAodJFcAUw

Thermal coal was tipped by the budget to average $US60 per tonne over the next year, compared with the current price for Newcastle thermal coal of $US63 per tonne, excluding shipping costs.
Alan kohler in a TV interview on budget day  indicated that the price fall was majorly due to influx of iron ore  from irons majors Rio tinto and BHP etc  who have brought down prices – making it  tougher  for chinese iron ore producers. In the process  a few smaller australlian miners are in trouble

After averaging around $US125 a tonne over 2013, the iron ore price sank to  $US46.70 in April before recovering to about $US61 a tonne.

Stock market and High frequency trading

High frequency and computerised trading and rogue trading is again  in the news with  trader Mr Adoboli working for UBS  who was arrested at his desk, is alleged to have lost £1.3 billion through his rogue trades  according to the company , now also annoucing that they might go into a loss in this quarter. According to some reports in the media it was said that Mr Adoboli Himself had reported the  trade when the trade went bad before the computers picked up the loss.
Not so long ago in 2008 Jérôme Kerviel, the Paris-based Société Générale trader lost £4 billion in rogue trades, but fought it out in court contesting that the trading firm knew about his trades with large amounts.

High frequency computerised trading in Australia

HFT drives the wild swings in global markets and in co-relation influences the local assets, the intensity is expected to rise with online exchange Chi-X to  begin operating in Australia soon with a limited number of stocks in November. The ASX will launch its PureMatch trade transaction network, geared towards "attracting high-frequency trading customers", in the same month.

Trading robots and Investment firms

A High frequency Trading ( HFT ) program is essentially "robots" or custom created software trading the market. This software is custom made for big investment firms , so that they can use this software on high end computers to execute them fast on the market , when certain criteria are met( for eg  the price of s stock falls a certain percentage quickly then the software can sell the stock rapidly, these trades sometimes takes multiple criteria and factors to execute a trade).The software are often also called “trading robots”.  These robots or programs can also be describes as “Computer platform that allows the Financial Institution to engage in sophisticated high-speed, and high-volume trades on various stock and commodities markets. “ Among other things, the platform is capable of quickly obtaining and processing information regarding rapid developments in these markets.
"The problem is that so many of them are tied to look for the same price movements. So if one robot starts buying it just feeds all the other bots to do the same. It’s one factor contributing to these ridiculous swings you see on the markets." .At the same time sometimes when one robot of a big investment firms sells this can create a price drop on a stock, this can trigger another robot also to sell, thus creating a big sell off on the market as well. The big investment firms are quite secretive of the the algorithm that their robots trade on , as other trading firms can take advantage of this knowledge The rapid speed of this approach allows hedge funds and banks to dip into shares, commodities and other investments, sometimes in a matter of seconds to do massive trades to realise big profits. Goldman Sachs is a leader in the business of computed millisecond stock trades, reaping great profits from the transactions.

Recently ,computer trading software was in the news when according to media reports Sergey Aleynikov, tried to steal the computer trading software  from Goldman’s Sachs  automated stock and commodities trading business program.These software helps generate millions of dollars in profits each year.
When huge volumes of stock are moved or traded in such short time, fortunes are made and lost before anyone without such fast access can respond. The market changes in a blink of an eye  faster than the trader on the floor can pick up his phone. Australia does not allow for the kinds of arbitrage trading seen between trading platforms in the US and Europe. Critics say HFT is arbitrage, because it’s "getting something for nothing." which means that everyone pays, though many traders argue that HFT is no  different from day-trading or even “buy and hold” and therefore is not arbitrage.
In Australia, a high-profile court case between two local market heavyweights, Optiver and Tibra Capital, was in courts amid intense secrecy over revealing computer codes used in the trading strategy because of their incredible value

Flash trades  Algorithmic trading and “Wash trades”

Traders Magazine defined Flash trading, otherwise known as a flash order as “a marketable order sent to a market centre that is not quoting the industry's best price or that cannot fill that order in its entirety. The order is then flashed to recipients of the venue's proprietary data feed to see if any of those firms wants to take the other side of the order. This practice enables the market centre to try to keep the trade.
The practice of flashing orders across trading platforms helps providers of market liquidity, many of whom are high-frequency traders with powerful computer trading systems, to attract "buy" and "sell" orders from investors. Critics of the practice says sometimes some big  traders can unfairly exploit others with this method.
An ASX review details ''wash trades'', with the information that a wash trade ''is deemed to create a false and misleading appearance of active trading in a security'' and breaches the Corporations Act
.
The European Commission, the 27-nation European Union’s executive arm, is considering listing specific examples of strategies using algorithmic and high-frequency trading that should be punished by regulators as market manipulation

Australia , ASIC and High frequency trading

Electronic traders have been active in the Australian Stock market for several years. The most recent estimates suggest that high-frequency traders (HFT) make up about 20 per cent of the local share market's trades. ASIC has flagged tightening controls on stockbrokers that allow hedge funds to use their systems for high-frequency electronic trading as it prepares to open the Australian market to high-frequency trading groups
Links
Market Makers and High Frequency Trading
Cash-cow---high-frequency-trading
Australian equity market structure

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Collin Foods ASX - Like fried chicken and want to invest in KFC ?

Who does not like chicken ? - Chicken has always been of the more popular foods due to it being white meat , high in protein and  no health  risks in  comparisons to some other meats. So it would make sense if you actually think that this would be a good investment based on this general  information.

COLLINS FOODS LIMITED (CKF)

But picking stocks is not as simple as that ,  and punters should always do their research  before investing . However what we are focussing on  today on is Collin foods which we have featured on our blog before as a stock with potential. Collin foods is in the fried chicken sector , more specifically KFC.

Its currently trading @ $1.77

Jim Collins is the founder of the Collins Foods Limited, a franchisee of Kentucky Fried Chicken in Southern California, accepted the franchise for KFC in Queensland in 1968 and the first restaurant opened on 16th July 1969 at Kedron in Brisbane.

Collins foods has just announced that they are entering western Australia territory and expanding  and has announced that it is acquiring Competitive Foods, the franchisee of 44 KFC restaurants in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

This is going o add to their portfolio of  125 KFC fast food outlets, mainly in Queensland with a couple in NSW, as well as 27 Sizzler restaurants across Queensland, NSW and WA.

The acquisition will give Collins foods  a total of 169 KFC stores

This good news is also to be taken into consideration with the news that Collins Foods reported a 17% fall in net profit to $6.2 million for the six months to October 13, compared to the previous period. This could be attributed to Sizzler sales revenues have declined, this time by a hefty 9.1%

While the KFC store sales growth was up 1.3%, they are also increasingly losing sales to rival Dominos(ASX: DMP)  and also fresh new outlets  like Nandos , SALSA outlets ,  and also New franchisees Guzman & Gomez, Grilld Burgers and Crust Pizza owned by Retail Food Group (ASX: RFG)

We like to recommend this  stock to our viewers , but as always  do your own research before you invest and also have a read od what the fools have to say over here .If  they BOOST their sizzler earnings  and give  a bit of plus to their KFC earnings as well  , this could be a  diamond in the rough.

COLLINS FOOD LINKS

Link to their –>   CKF First Half Results Presentation (28/11/2013)

Listed directors for Collins foods as of today

Mr Russell Tate (Chairman)
Mr Kevin Perkins (Managing Director, CEO)
Mr Stephen Copulos (Non Exec. Director)
Mr Newman Manion (Non Exec. Director)
Ms Bronwyn Morris (Non Exec. Director)

For more information on Collins Foods Limited, click here.