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Good afternoon and welcome to HotCopper’s Market Close, I’m Jonathon Davidson.
It was another volatile day on the ASX followed by Wall Street’s worst night of the year as Trump tariffs, OPEC+ and iron ore prices helped tank Tuesday.
Mexican and Canadian tariffs are set to launch in a matter of hours driving up uncertainty with Canada already announcing its own countermeasures. Meanwhile, OPEC has lifted crude production cuts helping push down energy, and iron ore prices fell below US$100/tn in Singapore – but the materials sector largely pared intraday losses.
Looking at sectors, only health care was in the green, up just over point 3%. Energy led the laggards down nearly -3.2% followed by utilities down nearly -2.3%.
Let’s look at companies in the green.
Lynas Rare Earths jumped intraday on no news but investors might be keeping an eye on rare earth benchmark neodymium, prices of which are up nearly 10% at close over the last month. Shares closed up 2.9%.
Similarly, MAC Copper jumped intraday without releasing any news either but an ongoing expectation Trump tariffs could hit copper pushing up prices – the US is currently “investigating” domestic copper supply – saw shares close up nearly 2.3%.
Finally, Lottery Corporation hit the green, presumably as investors look for defensive stocks amid a wider market tumble. Non-casino gambling stocks have been fairly safe over the last twelve months, TLC closed up +2.5%.
Now let’s turn to companies in the red.
Mineral Resources fell -10% intraday on Monday despite releasing no news but following the iron ore price fall shock. Shares closed down nearly -9.7%, but the really worrying thing for MinRes is shares are at five year lows.
Elsewhere Boss Energy was at one point the day’s biggest laggard as uranium prices continue to slump around -7% month on month, and its spot in the energy index also helped drag it down as that sector sunk. Shares closed down nearly -9.9%.
Finally, Mesoblast continued to fall as it looks like that biotech stock’s strong run is coming to an end. The hotly watched stock is down -25% year to date, most of that incurred in the last month; its NASDAQ listing is similarly falling on the same time frame. Shares closed down neary -7.2%.
That’s market close, I’m Jonathon Davidson, have a great night and we’ll see you on Wednesday.
