Good Tuesday morning! It was a disrupting start to the week as the Monday session stayed shut. As of 8am AEST Tuesday, ASX futures are down -0.23%.
This follows a flat US session overnight; the S&P 500 ended +0.3% and the NASDAQ +0.4% – driven by NVIDIA, once again.
Looking at last Friday evening, most US markets ended down, largely due to US non farm payroll jobs data being far higher than expected.
Markets became concerned the Fed might not cut inflation until far later in the year – an antidote to some more bullish data we got earlier last week.
We get a US interest rate decision halfway through this week, as well as the latest US inflation data.
EToro global strategist Ben Laidler, for one, doesn’t expect the Fed to introduce any more rate hikes. Nor does he expect markets to pay much attention to strong US jobs data.
While that’s somewhat true – US markets are all green – the pace of last night’s increase was much slower.
Meanwhile, also since last Friday, Europe has been an area of interest.
France has called a snap election and the entire Eurozone region appears to be warming up to far-right parties. In turn, the Euro has hit a one-month-low.
Meanwhile, in ASX news:
NZ-based electricity company Mercury (ASX:MCY) has internally appointed a new CEO. Former general manager Stew Hamilton is now CEO of the billion dollar market cap company; outgoing CEO Vince Hawskworth will work with Steve on handover.
Elsewhere, insurer Tower (ASX:TWR) has upgraded its profit guidance to over $40M from $35M. The company has pointed to better weather conditions in New Zealand, meaning lower overall claims costs.
Meanwhile, Macquarie Bank (ASX:MQG) has reportedly sent an email warning to customers after one scammer attempted to steal $1M. The bank reportedly stopped the transaction from going ahead.
In forex, the AUD continues to buy 66 US cents.
Looking at commodities, brent crude is up +2.87% to US$81.90; uranium is up +0.17% to US$87.40/lb; copper has increased +1.60% overnight to US$4.55/lb; and the price of iron ore in Singapore has fallen -3.06% to US$105.40/tn.
That’s Market Open, we’ll be back with you in the trading day around lunchtime.