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A second session where stocks drifted lower on very little news flow, with the US market closed overnight for Labor Day and economic + company data thin on the ground.
The ASX200 fell away after an ok first 30 minutes to end Monday, the first trading day of September, down 0.5%. The ASX started the new month on the wrong foot, dragged down by the big banks and major miners, while gold surged to a new all-time high following another post by Donald Trump – more on this later.
Weakness crept into the ASX today as we start the most challenging month of the year, where the ASX has fallen on average 2% for the past 10 years. Dividends play a role here, however we’ve seen declines 70% of the time, and with markets at/near all-time highs, it’s easy to see why some profit taking may creep into the market ahead of the seasonally strong December quarter. Defensives and Gold outperformed while Tech was the obvious pocket of weakness.
The ASX200 closed up +3.6% for August, shrugging off its seasonally weak tag, having closed lower 70% of the time over the last decade. Interestingly, September is usually worse. It has fallen 80% of the time over the last decade, resulting in an average loss of 2.35%.
The ASX200 slipped 0.1% lower on Friday, but it still finished the week up +0.1%. As we’ve said a few times lately, it’s feeling a touch tired above 9000. It was another week to remember from a reporting perspective, which dominated much of the movement on the sector level, although the materials sector continued to enjoy a strong recovery, topping the leader board for the week and month.
The ASX finished an up and down session slightly lower as reporting season volatility continued, with results headlined by strong gains in Harvey Norman and Mesoblast on the other side with ~10% moves for both continuing the trend of outsized share price reactions to earnings beats/misses.
The ASX 200 advanced +0.2% on the penultimate trading day of August, taking its monthly gain to +2.7%. As we often say, there are “lies, more lies, and statistics,” and in this case, the average decline for August and September combined over the last decade before 2025 was around -3%. Interestingly, when August managed to close positively, it was followed by a poor September. Time will tell this year, but the market is feeling tired.
The ASX 200 ended the day up though it would have been a different story if it weren’t for strength in the banks with ‘The Big Four’ providing ~35pts of index gain with limited help from other sectors.
The ASX200 finished up +0.3% on Wednesday after an initial dip into lunchtime, following hotter-than-expected inflation data, which cooled expectations for a September rate cut. The big miners drove the market along with selected earnings standouts, even as the chances of a rate cut next month fell towards 20%.
The ASX moved higher today as strength in Materials and strong results from Tabcorp and Siteminder more than offset heavy losses in Woolworths with its worst single session on record after revealing a profit slump in their full-year result.
