Greetings and welcome to HotCopper’s the ASX Today for Monday, kicking off Week 33 of the year, I’m Jon Davidson and last week’s optimism has faded somewhat after Israel came out and rejected the USA’s peace plan for the Middle East, where oil prices were on the way back up on Monday.
The good news for Australian investors is that at the time of writing gold prices are firm above $4,300 an ounce USD, or at least as anything can be considered firm right now.
Also helping sentiment at home this week is that the RBA is widely believed to pause at its next meeting, meaning we won’t be slugged with a surprise rate hike.
But it’s earnings season, and there is always the chance for a surprise. So it was for bank investors on Monday after Westpac dropped its earnings then dropped -5% on reports of weaker economic conditions, as well as most crucially a 20% decline in mortgage applications in its third quarter.
This is widely perceived as related to the CGT property changes in Labor’s latest budget, and further evidence the property market is changing in real-time as a result.
Whether you’re for or against the CGT changes likely depends on where you get your money from.
Elsewhere, the other big mover of the day was Sunrise Energy Metals, a listed materials stock that a year ago was worth less than $5 a pop and now climbs towards $20 a share, driven by a fresh wave of optimism around collaboration from the Trump-led US government.
Looking further out into the week it will be the RBA call tomorrow that is most closely watched, before we go back to doing what we do best: monitoring Wall Street intraday performance and geopolitical headlines coming out of the Middle East.
If the ASX200 can stay above 9,000points this week however, that might be all it needs to do to preserve a sense of optimism after a gnarly several months.
That’s the ASX Today for Monday, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great night and we’ll see you tomorrow.
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