- What Matters Today in Markets: Listen here each morning or find all Market Matters Podcasts on Spotify.
The ASX 200 has now rallied from early losses to close near its highs for four straight sessions, a classic hallmark of a market with strong underlying buying support. The banks helped the market close higher on Monday, despite 60% of the main board closing lower, but overall it was a fairly lacklustre session considering the fresh US-Iran fighting, which sent US stock and bond futures lower as oil pushed back towards US$80/barrel. Again, we ignored sharp losses across the semiconductor space in Asia, but that’s no major surprise, given the dearth of major AI stocks on the ASX. Unfortunately, news out of the Middle East continued to deteriorate overnight:
- “We are reinstating THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving,” – President Trump wrote on a post on Truth Social.
The news on the stock level was limited, but again it favoured the bears with ResMed (ASX: RMD) falling almost 5% after a downgrade, Xero (ASX: XRO) more than 4% after the CEO sold her shares, more on that later, and Kingsgate (ASX: KCN) plunged almost 13% after a mechanical failure at its Thai gold mine. Again, combining the headwinds on both the geopolitical and company fronts, a small gain was relatively impressive, although the 8800 index magnet continues to win all arm wrestles with both the bulls and bears.
- We keep quoting that July is the ASX200’s strongest month of the year, but it better get a wriggle on; we’re effectively halfway, and it’s only up +0.3%.
Overseas indices were mixed overnight with the US succumbing to tech-led selling while across the Atlantic markets were firm. In Europe, the German DAX (+0.2%) and French CAC (+0.3%) both ground out small gains. Conversely, in the US the NASDAQ fell by -1.9%, weighing on other indices and sentiment, with the S&P 500 closing down 0.9%.
-
The SPI Futures are calling the ASX200 to open marginally lower (-8pts) following weakness on Wall Street, despite a ~50c gain by BHP Group (ASX: BHP) in the US.
MM is bullish towards the ASX200 around 8800
Add To Hit List
