US sharemarkets posted firm gains on Tuesday as investors were encouraged by economic data and earnings results. There were broad-based gains, with technology, energy and banks higher. There was much interest in speculation that Tesla could be taken private. Shares in Tesla ended higher by 11%. The Dow Jones index rose by 127 points or 0.5%. The S&P 500 index rose by 0.3% and the Nasdaq was up by 24 points or 0.3%.

Global oil prices rose on Tuesday. The US reinstated some of the sanctions against Iran. The concern is that sanctions on Iranian oil may be re-imposed in November. The US Energy Information Administration said that crude output was expected to rise 1.31 million barrels per day to 10.68 million bpd in 2018, down from the previous forecast of 10.79 million. Brent crude rose by US90 cents or 1.2% to US$74.65 a barrel and the US Nymex rose by US16 cents or 0.2% to US$69.17 a barrel.

Base metal prices rose by up to 1.6% on the London Metal Exchange (LME) on Tuesday with lead up the most while tin was up just 0.2%. But  aluminium bucked the trend, down by 0.1%.

The gold futures price rose by US60 cents an ounce to $1,218.30 an ounce. The spot gold price was trading near US$1,210 an ounce in late US trade. Iron ore rose by US55 cents on Tuesday or 0.8% to US$69.50 a tonne.

Ahead of the local open SPI futures ended flat at 6,202. Tuesday 07 August - close: Australian shares have retreated on Tuesday as falling metals prices and a slump in Amcor after its giant US acquisition put pressure on the materials sector. The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index closed down 19.1 points, or 0.3 per cent, at 6,253.9 points, while the All Ordinaries was down 18.2 points, or 0.29 per cent, at 6,340.8 points. 

Invictus Energy Limited: (IVZ.ASX, 5.3 cps, m.cap A$19.4m with 365.7m SOI, Cash ~$4.3m, O&G Explorer) 

• IVZ has appointed Getech to provide data management and technical support for Cabora Bassa Project who are preparing to mobilise to Zimbabwe
• Getech is a leading AIM-listed supplier of petroleum consultancy services to companies and governments in the oil and gas industry and has extensive experience in Africa.
• Getech will provide services that encompass initial data management, reprocessing and reinterpretation of US$30million legacy Mobil dataset
• Low cost, high impact work program is in progress to mature Cabora Bassa Project and the TCF+ Mzarabani conventional gas condensate target to farm out
• Invictus Managing Director Scott Macmillan commented on the appointment, “now that the harmonised elections in Zimbabwe have been concluded, the administration is focused on continuing to attract foreign investment and resurrecting the economy. We are excited to appoint Getech to undertake the reprocessing and reinterpretation work that will complement the internal work by our subsurface team ….  The aim of this work is to reprocess the legacy data Mobil acquired by utilising the latest seismic processing techniques which have improved significantly since the data was acquired over 25 years ago.
• A link to the full announcement can be found here
• Please contact the desk on +61 8 6169 2668 should you wish to discuss further