Good afternoon and welcome to HotCopper’s The ASX Today for Tuesday of Week 12. I’m Jon Davidson, and while we’re recording this before the RBA interest rate decision, the fact that the market faded flat hours before we even got close to crunch time suggests to me the market is expecting a hike. That, or it’s extremely nervous for some other reason.
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After all, Australia’s Big Four all said they saw a March hike last week, and America’s ecosystem of investment bank analysts says the same. Cue the usual arguments from everyone with a mortgage trying to look for a way out of inflation, but with global oil prices rising – or diesel prices, more importantly – and over 30% growth in electricity prices over the last twelve months, thank Canberra for lifting the rebates so suddenly, it’s pretty obvious the RBA will need to step in.
And if they don’t do it now, they’re going to do it later – so I don’t see much point in prolonging the inevitable. (Editor’s update: They hiked today.)
At any rate, should the RBA hold this arvo, that will probably lead to a good mood in the room – but only for so long. So far, no signs that the Iran war will stop, and Trump is now talking about invading Cuba, too, which could at least divert resources and maybe indirectly turn down the temperature. One to watch.
Commodities unchanged since Friday, really, with gold still sticking to $5K USD and oil prices hovering just above Brent Crude; fresh Iranian strikes on the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg.
While we’re seeing market pain down under and while the S&P 500 has taken a hit over the last month, it’s interesting to look at what Russia’s stock market is doing: the Moscow exchange, or MOEX, has been having a pretty good month.
National oil company Rosneft’s share price has spiked as the United States lets Russian oil hit world markets, while India’s NIFTY50, which is largely exposed to Iranian oil shocks, is down -9% over the last 30 days.
Let’s look around the traps back home. West African Resources (ASX:WAF) is shaking off recent pain for gold miners as it continues to boost earnings as its gold production picks up; of course, it’s in West Africa, and Burkina Faso’s government are about as stable as nitro-glycerine.
Pepper Money (ASX:PPM), meanwhile, sank -10% as its takeover offer was actually reduced by Challenger Limited, reportedly citing market conditions in Pepper’s own words, though what those conditions are exactly remains unclear.
Finally, UBS analysts weighed in on the impact to BHP’s (ASX:BHP) bottom line when it comes to ongoing hostile negotiations with China’s iron ore buying apparatus, according to those analysts who, it should be noted are clients of BHP, apparently, BHP’s FY26 EBITDA is only set to reduce by -1% if negotiations aren’t resolved. If that feels like a client-friendly assessment to you, I would agree.
That’s The ASX Today for Tuesday, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great night.
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