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Good Afternoon and welcome to Market Close for Monday, I’m Jon Davidson.
A lot of investors were bracing for a slaughterhouse session today, but it turns out things weren’t really that bad. After Trump once again rattled Wall Street on Friday with tariff flip-flopping, as of around 3 in the arvo Sydney time, US futures are back in the green.
What’s going on? Something that I’ve been talking about a lot this year, tariff fatigue. As I’ve discussed with HotCopper editor Isaac McIntyre on the HotCopper Wire podcast, people are simply getting bored of the same old headlines.
Tariffs are set to resume again this Friday, worth noting US inflation is already on the way back up – so US CPI could be a downside risk in the months ahead. But at the moment, it’s looking like stock markets don’t care about the American economy. Which definitely seems true when you look at US bond yields.
Anyway, turning back home, consumer staples and materials leading the sectors in the final hour of trade on a gold price uptick and recent retail data; financials and IT in the red.
Turning to companies in the green,
Endeavour Group was up over 3% in the final hour of trades even after reports the Dan Murphy owner’s Executive Chairman suddenly quit, presumably in some kind of disagreement, but clearly the spectre of alcohol sales have outweighed that red flag.
Elsewhere, Tambourah Metals jumped 60% intraday after hitting some pretty juicy gold grades up to 126 grams per tonne, with gold prices where they are and the spirit of Diggers and Dealers around the traps, the jump was hardly surprising.
Finally, niobium leader WA1 Resources was firmly green intraday after producing niobium oxide powders from half a kilogram of ore at its Luni project, demonstrating that Australia can make the stuff on its own. At least, a small amount of it.
So what about the reds?
More pain for Star Entertainment after the casino’s bad luck hasn’t been enough to save it from a worse fate, revealing last week the company expects key lifeline deals to fall through.
Elsewhere, Ioneer Limited made the top fallers board at one point in the final hour of trade on no news but presumably as investors look to offload underperforming lithium stocks after a bit of hype when some benchmarks rose slightly last week.
Finally, Commonwealth in the red on Monday as investors continue to rotate out of that stock, worth noting is that the market’s largest company is down -3.10% in the last month and its market cap is back to $291 billion. Which clearly isn’t too dire by any measure.
That’s Market Close for Monday, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great week and we’ll see you on Tuesday.
