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Australian shares are heading towards a -0.21% drop when the bell rings Friday, with it no real shock ASX 200 futures are tipping a decline considering how bullish the whole bourse got through to close yesterday.
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A heady +1.1% gain to 4pm on Thursday took us within touching distance of 9,000pts again, though many felt the equity pop was apropos of nothing.
The bullish sentiment building around the U.S. government shutdown helped, as did gold’s rocketing prices, but overall it felt like buying for buying’s sake – and when the Aussie bourse balloons like that, consolidation follows.
Interestingly, Wall Street seems less fussed about banking profits than our Oz traders, with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones both eeking out gains under the shadow of the shutdown. The Nasdaq composite gained +0.4%, too.
Both the Nasdaq and S&P ticked over new heights; the latter has reset its highs 30 times through CY25, though that’s down from ’24’s 57 new records.
Plenty of news before we get to the long weekend, though; let’s run through all that now.
ASX stocks to watch
Friday’s biggest watch will be the AGL Energy (ASX:AGL) annual meeting, where shareholders are coming together to formulate a climate plan. Major investor Grok, led by Mike Cannon-Brookes, holds sway there.
Elsewhere, telco companies like Telstra (ASX:TLS) and TPG Telecom (ASX:TPG) will now have to share “real-time” updates on Triple Zero outages from next month as the gov’t cracks down on the sector for Optus’ sins.
DigiCo (ASX:DGT) popped up with news its IT capacity will be expanding to 41 megawatts by mid-2026; guidance was also hiked $5 million higher.
HotCopper users have been bookmarking Iceni Gold (ASX:ICL) through this morning, too, after the little gold miner landed “pleasing” RC results from a 10,000-metre drilling campaign at its Guyer target site.
And, brokers cut Boss Energy (ASX:BOE) to “Neutral” with a $2.10 target.
Buck and ore
Now – in forex, the Oz buck buys 65.9 U.S. cents.
Looking at commodities, all in the greenback,
Iron Ore dipped -0.3%, to sell at $103.40 a tonne in Singapore,
Brent Crude is down -1.57% at $64.32/bbl,
Gold has slowed down every so slightly Friday; it’s at $3,858 an ounce, and,
US natgas futures dropped -1.9%, to $3.40 per gigajoule.
That’s HotCopper’s ASX Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre – good luck, happy trading.
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