Market Open: Hopes for Iran peace – and any kind of market recovery – stymied by more US missile strikes

At The Bell – Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Australia has a strong recovery day and adds some meaningful points to the bourse. Things are looking pretty alright, especially over on Wall Street, where tech (and especially AI thematics) is booming. And then there’s missile strikes heard in Tehran. Again.

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Half of my Market Open columns through these last three months could probably dance to a tune like that one — and we’re ending WK19 there again.

I’ve been at the RIU Resources Round-Up in Sydney, interviewing all those managing directors, CEOs, and chairpeople, for you to hear more about their stock, so I even missed talking about the big green day! (Thanks to my colleague Colin Sandell-Hay, for taking this column Tuesday—Thursday.)

As an aside: If that piques your interest, everything’s available in our regular From The Floor section. I caught up with Alligator Energy (ASX:AGE), Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT), EV Resources (ASX:EVR), and plenty more.

For those not racing over to see those videos, we’re looking at a 140-point collapse when the bourse opens at 10AM today, nearly -1.6% lower.

As I said, that’s largely after Wall Street and its tech boom faltered as more uncertainty around the Washington-Tehran peace emerged. There’s meant to be a formal peace accord coming, but then the U.S. Central Military Command staged more strikes on Iran. They’ve since said it was “in self-defence.”

I’d say that the Reserve Bank’s decision to hike rates on Tuesday hasn’t helped much either, but we actually enjoyed some (for now, rare) green arrows after all that, so I can only really imagine it’s Iran weighing heaviest today.

ASX stocks to watch

I won’t spend too long on stocks, with everything else that we’re worrying about this morning, but there have been a few things. AGL Energy (ASX:AGL) was one, hitting Friday headlines after CEO Damien Nicks warned the market is “deeply underestimating” power demand from data centres.

Several leadership shuffles this morning, including Perseus Mining (ASX:PRU) promoting mining executive Wade Bickley to CEO, and Cleanaway Waste (ASX:CWY) appointing Samanta Hogg as chair-elect today.

A few big reporting results today as well, including from Macquarie Group (ASX:MGQ), QBE Insurance (ASX:QBE), REA Group (ASX:REA), and Block (ASX:XYZ). News Corp (ASX:NWS) already shared its update, telling shareholders it’s on track for record profits this year on double-digit earnings growth in all of its units.

And I already mentioned it, but our RIU Sydney interviews are live.

Buck and ore

Now – in forex, the Oz dollar buys US 72c.

In commodities, all in the greenback,

Brent Crude is at $102.41/Bbl as we head into the weekend, after having lost ~6.9% from Monday through to today,

Iron Ore keeps strengthening; $110.50 a tonne in Singapore,

Gold is ticking back, $4,703/ounce, and,

US natgas futures basically flat, $2.78 per gigajoule.

That’s HotCopper‘s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre – good luck today.

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