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The ASX 200 is rumbling back to life after the Australia Day long weekend and investors are pushing the bourse up by over 37.9 points already.
The 0.45% rise, to around 8,417 points, stands in defiance to the tech rout Wall Street suffered through its late Monday trade; markets were left more than rattled after Chinese AI company DeepSeek today claimed it had built a “sophisticated” large language model that could challenge the top dogs on the cheap.
The declaration saw the S&P 500 plunge as much as 1.5% as sellers rushed to eliminate their AI-geared investments. The Nasdaq was hit even harder, dropping 3.1%. So too chipmakers like ASML and Japan’s Softbank Group.
It was Nvidia that took the brunt of the panic, though, with the iconic chipmaker losing nearly $1 trillion in value – the largest value loss in one session ever.
The Dow Jones was among the only U.S. indices that survived today’s tech bloodbath; the heavyweight marker actually traded 0.7% up by close.
Back home, Commonwealth Bank (ASX:CBA) has walked away from its Bank of Hangzhou investment, pocketing $940 million with the sale of its 5.5% stake. The shares chunk went to Beijing’s New China Life Insurance.
On HotCopper forums, investors are watching Telix Pharmaceuticals (ASX:TLX) after the Melbourne biotech company put a bow on its $230 million RLS Radiopharmacies acquisition after three months of red tape.
There’s a Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) update due today too – once that drops, HotCopper forum users will undoubtedly focus in on the results.
First Graphene (ASX:FGR) has also locked down key patents to produce critical minerals.
Elsewhere in what is shaping as a quiet week Down Under, we’ll get our hands on December’s CPI data tomorrow. Fourth-quarter CPI data will also arrive then.
Today, NAB shares its December business survey around 11.30 AM Sydney time.
Looking at forex, the Aussie dollar is buying 62.9 US cents.
To commodities, which are in the greenback,
Iron Ore has edged up slightly, to $104.50 a tonne in Singapore,
Brent Crude is trading at $76.91,
Gold is trading at $2,749 per ounce, and,
US natgas futures are at $3.69 per gigajoule.
That’s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre, stick with us for HotCopper’s Market Update.
