Join our daily newsletter At The Bell to receive exclusive market insights
Good Afternoon and welcome to Market Close for Thursday, I’m Jon Davidson. It’s shaping up to be another dull week despite a positive start on Monday, but any risk-on sentiment coming from the US government shutdown deal isn’t quite trickling down under.
Not helping matters at all is that the ABS released unemployment data today, showing a decline back down to a rate of 4.3% – the theory was, earlier this year, the Australian labour market was weakening. That doesn’t appear to be the case now.
And what that implies is even longer to wait for rate cuts, given that the RBA is meant to pay half of its attention to keeping unemployment low. So with CPI data hotter than expected in the last few weeks, the RBA pause, and now this, it’s not hard to see why real estate led laggards heading into the final hour of trade, second only to IT, which had shed nearly -4% going into the final hour. Ouch. Typical for Australia, materials was faring okay.
Higher rates for longer, jitters around the much-discussed AI bubble, there’s a lot of reasons to be cautious right now. The good news, at least, is that Commonwealth pared back some losses on Thursday, suggesting we’ve seen the worst for the big bank this week.
Let’s turn to companies in the green.
Havilah Resources soared on Thursday as larger copper player Sandfire Resources agreed to invest in the former’s South Australian copper-gold project, even coughing up $30M for Havilah to go exploring in nearby areas. That’s very kind of Sandfire, though, it might be worried about the Botswanan government appearing to take an interest in limiting foreign ownership concessions in the country where Sandfire operates.
Elsewhere, Renerve Limited popped as the nerve surgery repair biotech player saw its main product approved for use in hospitals tied to the US department of defence and veterans affairs.
Finally, Core Lithium led gainers on Thursday up 21% along with a basket of other lithium companies as year-high spodumene prices continue to cause excitement among lithium bulls.
And so what about the reds?
Droneshield very controversial today, after its CEO Oleg Vornik revealed he sold all of his shares in the company for $30M at some point in the last week; earlier this week, Droneshield purportedly made an error when it announced new contract wins, then quickly retracted that statement, confirming it accidentally re-announced existing works. That has led many to wonder what’s going on behind closed doors, HotCopper makes no imputation of criminality.
Elsewhere, WebJet Group sunk around -20% intraday after flagging tough FY26 macro is here to stay, ultimately meaning domestic travel demand has become subdued. That wasn’t received well; WebJet also blamed an ASIC enforcement action for scaring customers away.
Finally, it was ANZ’s turn to have a steep red day this week, as its latest AGM didn’t exactly inspire investor confidence under the helm of its new job-cut happy CEO, a move which is actually costing it a lot of money.
That’s Market Close for Thursday, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great evening and we’ll see you on Friday.
