Greetings and welcome to HotCopper’s The ASX Today for Thursday of Week 9, I’m Jon Davidson, and while I often criticise the ASX for paying too much attention to Wall Street, in this case, a U.S. tech stock recovery has been welcome news.
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Case in point, the XJO hit a new intraday record of 9,200 points this morning, though only briefly – which makes me feel better about having recently said we’ll hit 9,400 by the end of the year.
What’s going on? It’s not so much Aussie earnings today as it is Wall Street, or, namely, a revitalised sense of confidence in tech and software stocks coming from Wall Street, but today wasn’t without its local news.
Qantas (ASX:QAN), for one, slumped on an earnings miss, and it’s now less valuable than the market cap of Lynas Rare Earths (ASX:LYC). Which doesn’t really mean anything in and of itself, but does underscore Australia’s ongoing status as a minerals economy.
Elsewhere, Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) – I’m still calling it Pilbara Minerals, and you can’t stop me – is back just south of its all-time high of $5.42 following a move from Zimbabwe’s gov’t suspend exports of all minerals from the country. That means lithium, which Zimbabwe is a major producer of, thanks to years of Chinese investment. Now Zimbabwe’s government is asking those same Chinese miners to stop sending lithium to China. Could be a good time to be a border crossing guard.
Oz tech stocks bounced back hard Thursday as the latest Agentic AI scare trade appears to be wearing off, probably to the relief of just about everyone, seeing as the stocks that were being impacted were starting to make less and less sense.
WiseTech (ASX:WTC) was the most obvious beneficiary there, and its job cuts are reportedly underway with bouncers escorting staff out the doors this morning. Talk about a sweet goodbye, shares still below $50 each.
Elsewhere, gold remains closer to US$5,200 an ounce than not, and silver’s just below US$90/oz. In the background, the market seems to have missed that Australian inflation hit 3.8% yesterday, as we get further and further from the target band – though core inflation didn’t budge much.
Still, there’s no point in removing volatile items when electricity prices have climbed over +30% in the last year. Once again, I find myself asking: Why did the RBA cut last year, again? We may never know.
That’s The ASX Today for Thursday, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great night.
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