ASX Market Close: RBA pauses rates – but was it really that shocking?

Good Afternoon and welcome to HotCopper’s Market Close for Tuesday 8th of July, I’m Jon Davidson. 

Today’s big ticket item: the RBA has kept rates on hold, defying expectations from just about everybody. But as I wrote last week, it’s hardly the time to be making bold moves – and with Philip Lowe’s infamous bungle still in recent history, Bullock won’t be leaving things to chance. 

Most analysts reckon that if it wasn’t going to be July, then we’ll see an RBA cut in August – but with tariffs now set to kick back in on August 1, that’s hardly a given, either. 

Looking at sectors, it was a bit dismal. IT led for most of the day, looking at the reds, materials pared losses heading into market close with staples leading laggards in the last half hour of trade. 

Let’s turn to stocks in the green. 

Qantas defied reports overnight the company may have been contacted by a cybercriminal following last week’s cyberattack, having a modest green day in a show of confidence for defensive travel. 

It was a similar for MinRes with those stocks also having a modest green Tuesday, even after reports the company might not be firing controversial founder Chris Ellison after all. With that said, 1Y returns are still down around -60%.

Finally, smallcap cold welding defence-focused company Titomic was the latest defence minor to have an upswing on no news, firmly in the green heading into close, even with 1.3 billion shares on issue. 

So let’s turn to the reds. 

Spare a thought for Botanix, a US-based biotech aiming to treat an excessive sweat condition. Revenue came in today at $25M, seeing the stock get slaughtered, falling well off its $600M market cap. There’s also the issue it only has under 7,000 customers – less than 0.002% of the US population. 

Guzman Gomez fell on Tuesday, with the last hour of trades seeing the price rise back above $28.00/sh, however, YTD performance is down over 30% and shorts on the Mexican fast food chain have recently climbed upwards. 

Speaking of shorts, James Hardie was in a similar boat, red in the final half hour. The construction retailer is now one of the top ten most shorted stocks in Australia a few months after its controversial $14B buyout of AZEK, a US company that pretty much just sells decking. 

That’s Market Close for Tuesday, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great night, we’ll see you tomorrow.