Week 18 Wrap: Oz election here; China and US reportedly chat tariffs & ASX revival

Welcome back to HotCopper’s weekly wrap for Week 18!

Due to a tight conflation of public holidays, we’ve missed out on weekly wraps for the last two weeks. The good news is that despite a lot of headlines, not too much has changed.

Here’s the big news over the last two/three weeks (depending on how you want to count it):

• China and the US are now reportedly talking tariffs after much hubbub
• We’re still waiting for pharma, microchip and copper tariff announcements
• Trump has said he’ll water down tariffs on automakers in the US
• Gold has eased off highs above US$3.4K to ~US$3.25K at time of writing
• Brent Crude is back to ~US$62.50/bbl at time of writing
• In Australia, the ALP are tipped to win the Federal election
• The ASX200 has returned to where it was before April 2
• The UK stock market has had its best run in 8 years
• Wall Street earnings season has revived some AI bullishness…
• But McDonald’s has pointed to a weakening consumer

Outside of that, where not related to tariffs, it’s been mostly tariff talk.

(Except for Australia, where the Federal election has dominated attention spans across this sunburnt country.)

When it comes to tariffs, I wrote up a Tariff Wrap for the start of May earlier today, and much of what this Weekly Wrap would otherwise be can be found by clicking this link to check out that article.

Here’s the headlines that caught my eye this week:

Australian Equities

Peninsula Energy’s Chair exits on ANZAC day as pressures on stock grow

Telix hints FDA changing the goalposts by rejecting ‘semi-approved’ drug candidate

Flight Centre cuts FY25 pre-tax range from $365-405M to $300-335M; announces buyback

Lynas points to US-China trade war as net negative for rare earths player’s books

27 Days Later: ASX200 hits two-month high as Trump tariff impacts fade

Australian Economy

Australian CPI comes in slightly hotter than expected but on the whole on-track

Aus retail spending comes in at +0.3% for March 2025 (Feb: +0.2%)

Australian election looms with ALP tipped to win; minority gov’t a real chance 

International Equities

Microsoft and Meta shake off tariff concerns in Wall Street confession season…

…While Amazon misses estimates as tariff threats continue to pose risk

McDonalds keeps 2025 guidance unchanged despite flagging sales squeeze

International Economies

Temu and Shein both hike US prices in response to Trump tariffs 

China omits making any mention of stimulus in latest presser as trade war unfolds

Mark Carney wins Canadian election on largely anti-Trump campaign

Geopolitics

First DeepSeek, now this: Alibaba has unveiled its own AI chatbot

Auto tariffs the latest class to see watering down from Trump admin: Lutnick

China says it has started negotiating with US on tariffs