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Greetings and welcome to HotCopper’s The ASX Today for Thursday, I’m Jon Davidson. A green day on the market following red Wednesday on the back of fears related to Trump’s latest tariff tizzy. This time around, he managed to annoy European leaders so much the EU was reminded it did have market power.
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A new ‘deal’ is now being made between the U.S. and Greenland, and, well, really, you can already see where this is going. So let’s turn to home, because here in Australian we get more important information for our local considerations today, and that’s the unemployment rate.
Australian unemployment actually dropped back down to 4.1% from 4.3%, and when that data came out at 11.30AM East Coast time, the market immediately fell back, and heading into mid-arvo trades, the market hadn’t recovered its position in the 8,860pts range where it sat before that. Still, up half a percent.
But why did the Oz market drop on news that unemployment inched back down? Because that’s not a good thing for rate cut expectations.
More people employed means more people getting paid, which implies more people with discretionary income to go out and cause inflation by buying goods and services. That suggests another rate pause, or even, in the worst-case scenario, a hike from the Reserve Bank in February, and a hot labour market also doesn’t suggest a spring to action. At least the Aussie dollar hit a fifteen-month high.
Looking around the traps, Commonwealth Bank (ASX:CBA) and the other big banks have been gaining strength back from a red Wednesday as Greenland jitters calm down; materials stocks had a tough day as a fallback in silver and gold prices prompted panic hurting Fortescue (ASX:FMG) and scraping BHP (ASX:BHP) a little, on the other side of the big end of town, Energy is having a good day as Woodside (ASX:WDS) and Santos (ASX:STO) climbed on the back of brent prices.
That’s The ASX Today for Thursday, I’m Jon Davidson, have a jaunty evening.
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