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ASX dips into red as Middle East tensions rattle markets
By Millie Muroi and Jessica Yun
Welcome to your five-minute recap of the trading day and how experts saw it.
The numbers
A sell-off in tech stocks dragged the Australian sharemarket down on Monday as escalating tensions in the Middle East rattled the prospect of stable inflation and rate cuts later this year, and Wall Street slid on the back of a mixed start to the US earnings season on Friday.
The S&P/ASX 200 Index fell 35.6 points, 0.5 per cent, to 7752.5 at the close as interest rate sensitive sectors weighed on its performance.
Wall Street closed its worst week since October on Friday.Credit: Bloomberg
Many market-watchers are adopting a wait and see approach to how the US market will react to escalating tensions in the Middle East, after Iran launched a drone and missile attack against Israel over the weekend.
The lifters
The commodities sectors were stronger on Monday with iron ore miners South32 (up 4.6 per cent) and Rio Tinto (up 3.6 per cent) muscling up, helping to lift the mining sector (up 0.4 per cent) alongside heavyweight BHP (up 0.6 per cent). Energy companies including coal miners Yancoal (up 2.1 per cent) and Whitehaven (up 1 per cent) were also stronger, along with oil giants Santos (up 0.9 per cent) and Woodside (up 0.4 per cent).
Investors also bought into haven stocks, including gold miner Endeavour (up 1.5 per cent), and healthcare companies, including medical equipment supplier EBOS Group (up 2.1 per cent) and Fisher and Paykel Healthcare (up 1.1 per cent).
The laggards
Tech companies (down 1.8 per cent) were among the worst-performing stocks on the index. Data centre operator NEXTDC (down 3.9 per cent), Xero (down 1.7 per cent) and TechnologyOne (down 1.7 per cent) all dropped.
Communication services firms (down 1.1 per cent), real estate investment trusts (REITs, down 1 per cent) and industrials (down 0.9 per cent) were also among the weakest sectors, with Telstra (down 1.3 per cent), Goodman Group (down 0.8 per cent) and Qantas (down 1.9 per cent) all declining.
Star Entertainment as dipped 4 per cent as hearings for its second inquiry got under way.
The lowdown
The Australian sharemarket extended its decline, pulling back for the third straight trading day on Monday.
While there was a broad-based sell-off for the market, tech stocks were a major drag on the index.
Meanwhile, miners and energy companies were stronger on the back of higher oil prices amid the elevated risk of war and possible supply disruptions, and higher metals prices are higher after the LME banned new Russian metals following sanctions by the US and UK.
In the US on Friday, the benchmark S&P 500 Index sank 1.5 per cent to close out its worst week since October, when a huge rally on Wall Street began.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.2 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite Index dipped 1.6 per cent after setting a record a day earlier.
JPMorgan Chase weighed on the market. Despite reporting stronger profit for the first three months of the year than analysts had expected, its forward-looking outlook disappointed.
The nation’s largest bank reported a key source of income this year would show only modest growth that was below Wall Street consensus estimates.
Traders are largely betting on just two rate cuts this year, according to data from CME Group, down from forecasts for at least six at the start of the year.
While the downside of a remarkably resilient US economy is a diminished chance of rate cuts, the upside is that the strong economy is propping up sales and earnings of many businesses. That has translated into profit growth for a broad range of companies, rather than just the Big Tech behemoths that dominated the market last year, according to David Lefkowitz, head of US equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.
Analysts are forecasting companies in the S&P 500 to deliver a third straight quarter of profit growth, according to FactSet. This week will feature reports from such big names as Bank of America, Johnson & Johnson and UnitedHealth Group.
Tweet of the day
Quote of the day
“Multinationals play hardball, and it comes down to power,” said Australian Retailers Association chief executive Paul Zahra, as global multinational food giants such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, Mars and PepsiCo face a push to front the Senate inquiry into supermarket prices.
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With AP
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