Money is tight concept 2
Adobe Stock
The Market Online - At The Bell

Join our daily newsletter At The Bell to receive exclusive market insights

At the start of this week we saw NVIDIA – as a proxy for the AI thematic in general – severely tested once again. In fact, the company lost A$415B in one session, which was the largest ever decline in value for one company witnessed in Wall Street history. The amount NVIDIA lost was equal to the entire value of Chevron, if you needed any convincing Big Tech is the new Big Oil. But was it really NVIDIA’s fundamentals being tested, or was it AI in general? 

The two are interlinked – NVIDIA’s marketing team make sure of that – but we’re still waiting to see any of those radical social changes we were supposed to be seeing by now. As far as changing the world goes, a virus from Wuhan remains more important than high powered chatbots. 

In Australia, our great I Can’t Believe It’s Not Recession continues. While GDP growth isn’t negative – it came in at +0.2% – it’s been stuck there for the last few quarters, while GDP measured per capita remains negative for the last six. So there you have it: we’re coming up on a two year long per capita recession.

A lot of bullshit was flung around this week as Jim Chalmers pretended to hate the RBA and the RBA pretended that it’s not there to be blameable; I’m not going to bother with any of that because it’s all theatre.

There was one big landmark deal this week that shook things up: Blackstone’s A$40B+ buyout of Australian data centre player AirTrunk. To anybody not following that world, you might have said “what’s AirTrunk?” It’s not far away from being a household name now – people will go on about this deal for years. It’s big news, but unsurprising. Data centres are the new oilfields. 

There was a lot that happened this week in the realm of more curious goings-on, too. Let’s run through some of them: Australia posted its hottest ever August on record (love it or hate it, you can’t argue with numbers); ASX-listed Metarock’s major operating arm was taken to court in QLD for industrial manslaughter; Tianqi Lithium which operates a hydroxide plant in Kwinana WA is now a loss-making company on lower commodity prices; Volvo has ditched its plans to become an EV-only company; US job openings are at a 3.5Y low; and Mongolia welcomed a visit from Putin without arresting him which the International Criminal Court made Mongolia promise they’d do, despite The Hague being in the Netherlands and Mongolia being, well, China.

Any surprises there are also theatre. 

Australian Economy 

Australian Equities

International Equities

International Economies

Commodities

Geopolitics

More From The Market Online
Disability NDIS concept

Freedom Care Group reveals NDIS wants to ban it providing program services

Shares in Freedom Care Group (ASX:FCG) were down more than -3% on Wednesday after revealing the…
Small pile of rare earth minerals

Critica confirms high grade REE mineralisation at Jupiter with 3,074 ppm intercept

Critica Ltd has confirmed high grade REE mineralisation at the Jupiter target, part of the larger…
AI gen vanadium flow battery concept

Aussie Vanadium unveils vision for a 100MW modular vanadium flow battery

Australian Vanadium has kicked off Project Lumina, seeking to build a modular 100MW Vanadium Flow Battery…
Crosse section of the earth

Earths Energy confirms Paralana as an Enhanced Geothermal Systems Program project

Earths Energy Ltd has completed preliminary work on its Techno Economic Feasibility study for the Paralana…