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The ASX 200 is tipped to rise at open today, with futures up 0.48% early on this Thursday morning after Wall Street’s Santa Rally regathered its momentum.
The Aussie lift today comes after the U.S. got its November CPI report – the data, which confirmed inflation in the States has been teetering around 2.7%, was basically as expected, but it came with a sharp surge nonetheless.
It definitely opens the door for a Federal Reserve rate cut; a path the RBA didn’t go down.
The Santa Rally getting back on track was felt most in big tech, where Magnificent Seven stocks like Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla all recorded long surges to see the Nasdaq composite close above 2,000 points for the first time.
Market euphoria was helped on too by the Bank of Canada’s bumper 50 basis points cut overnight as it gets closer to wrangling inflation in its economy.
In Europe too, its cuts on the menu: The Swiss central bank and the European Central Bank are being tipped to trim by a quarter point later today. Most European markets rose through Wednesday’s trade on the expectation.
Back home, Australia will get its latest unemployment update at 11.30am AEDT.
Early data has said November’s unemployment gains should be somewhere around 25,000 to 50,000 higher; the employment rate will likely be at 4.2%.
After yesterday’s dovish outlook from RBA governor Michele Bullock (and similar sentiments from deputy governor Andrew Hauser at a conference last night), these inflation numbers may hurt the hype, though only a little.
Spark New Zealand (ASX:SPK) has banked the last of its incoming Connexa towers sale money, pocketing NZ$314 million through the now-concluded split.
Toys R Us (ASX:TOY) investors will get a chance to grill executives at today’s AGM.
Looking at forex, the Aussie dollar is today buying 63.7 US cents – bumped down somewhat by China’s controversial plan to let its currency the yuan weaken in preparation for Donald Trump’s major U.S. tariffs.
To commodities, which are in the greenback,
Iron Ore has dipped 0.7% to $104.65 a tonne in Singapore,
Brent Crude is trading at $73.59,
Gold is trading up at $2,729 per ounce, and,
US natgas futures are selling a lofty 6.4% higher at $3.36 per gigajoule.
That’s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre, stick with us for HotCopper’s Market Update.
