- Markets @ Midday: Listen here at lunchtime or find all Market Matters Podcasts on Spotify.
Tariffs were back impacting the ASX today after the Whitehouse said that it will maintain a minimum global levy of 10%, while imports from countries with a trade surplus with the US will face at least 15%. The impact on Australia is a more indirect one, potentially hurting the growth rates of our main trading partners.
- The ASX200 fell -80pts/-0.92% closing at 8662.
- Utilities (+0.7%), Materials (-0.22%) and Energy (-0.30) outperformed, though defensive Utilities were the only group to trade higher.
- IT (-2.38%), Healthcare (-1.92%) and Communications (-1.14%) led the weakness.
- For the week, the ASX ended marginally lower (-0.06%) while for the month of July the main board put on +2.35%.
- Capstone Copper (CSC) +9.46% surged after posting record quarterly production numbers overnight.
- Sandfire Resources (SFR) +3.57% rebounded too, recovering a fair chunk of the losses from earlier in the week.
- Star Entertainment (SGR) -16.36% hit a new low on news the sale of its Queen’s Wharf precinct in Brisbane to its Hong Kong-based joint venture partners fell over.
- ResMed (RMD) +1.01% reported solid 4Q numbers with a +10% jump in revenue vs the same period last year with the shares touching a record high $44.12 in early trade.
- Soul Patts (SOL) -0.64% fell after saying it expected its preliminary net asset value (pre-tax) to come in between $12.18 billion and $12.68 billion for FY25. It also declared a fully franked final dividend of 59¢ per share.
- Downer (DOW) was flat despite announcing a new contract worth up to $220 million over four years with the Department of Defence.
- Iron ore was higher, though it will be down for the week – it’s first decline in 6 weeks
- Gold was flat during the session, trading around $3291/oz at our close.
- Softer trading in Asia, Hong Kong down –0.5%, China off –0.4% while Japan was trading down 1%.
- Iron Ore in Singapore was stronger, trading at $100.20/mt around our close.
- Vale (VALE US) reported stronger than expected 2Q results on higher production and sales. Underlying earnings of $US3.42 billion last quarter was ahead of $US3.31 billion consensus.
- Peabody Energy (BTU) met expectations overnight, with 2Q earnings (EBITDA) of $US93.3m from revenue of $US890.1m. The ~73% decline YoY was expected, with their 28.7m tons of coal sold in the quarter realisng materially lower prices.
- US Futures are down ~0.3%, we covered results from Amazon (AMZN US), Apple (AAPL US) & First Solar (FSLR US) this morning.
