Greetings and welcome to HotCopper’s The ASX Today, I’m Jon Davidson, and while the XJO tried to break green at lunch, it couldn’t quite get there. Heading into the latter half of arvo trades, we’re down half a percent in the face of tomorrow’s widely expected RBA rate hike, gold dipping back to $5,000 an ounce flat USD, oil spiking above US$100/bbl, and a general sense of uncertainty.
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In the Middle East, the war of weapons and words continues. Trump said Iran wanted ceasefire talks; Iran denies this. Israel is continuing to focus on Lebanon, the Strait of Hormuz remains shut, and U.S. attacks on Iran’s major hydrocarbon export hub haven’t really moved any needle one way or the other.
I said it last week, and I’ll say it again: Chaos reigns. While the ASX 200 is up +10% on a one-year basis, the bourse has lost nearly -4% over the last month. Retail participation in oil markets is at record highs, an obvious source of competition for gold, which, since the war, has gone down when oil goes up.
The market continues to look for safety in defensive and energy stocks; uranium’s been trading flat all month, and uranium majors populated the biggest fallers on Monday along with gold. And then of course we’re more likely than not to get a rate hike tomorrow.
More pain for now. Goldman Sachs said a fortnight ago it expects the market to take a fortnight to digest this war. Tonight’s U.S. session will be closely watched by Aussies, but with the RBA looming large tomorrow, a good night on Wall Street mightn’t mean much for us. That’s assuming it’s good.
Looking at stocks around the traps: The market resolutely shrugged at news from ARN Media (ASX:A1N) that Australia’s media regulator has imposed a five-year licence condition on the company, basically killing the now-axed Kyle and Jackie-O show for good, with the broadcaster basically not allowed to make sex jokes anymore. That was the erstwhile program’s only real talking point, and ARN’s only real money-maker. No matter: No trades the stock anyway; it’s effectively illiquid.
A basket of uranium stocks got slammed on Monday, including Paladin Energy (ASX:PDN), Deep Yellow (ASX:DYL), and Boss Energy (ASX:BOE), down into the juniors like Peninsula Energy (ASX:PEN) and Aura Energy (ASX:AEE).
Two weeks ago, a diving mind might have suggested a boost to oil prices would revive nuclear enthusiasm. So far, it hasn’t – traders are back into coal instead, though Whitehaven (ASX:WHC) sold off on Monday, too.
Finally, CY25 IPO darling Tetratherix (ASX:TTX), which develops products to heal skin after surgery, as well as boasting other early-stage products looking at bone and skin grafts, has announced an interesting pivot on Monday. The company now wants to move into nasal-spray-delivered GLP-1 drugs, to use pub language, it wants to make nasal Ozempic. Tetratherix also said it will use its in-house polymers, and despite being worlds apart, the market liked what it heard.
That’s The ASX Today for Monday, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great night.
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