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ASX rises after Wall Street seesaw; Lithium stocks jump again
By Penry Buckley
The Australian sharemarket was trading stronger at midday on Thursday, after US stock indexes stormed back from big early drops to finish higher overnight, led by a handful of influential Big Tech companies.
The S&P/ASX200 was up, gaining 446.30 points or 0.6 per cent to 8,034.20 as of 12.16pm AEST, with 10 sectors in the green or ticking up, led by information technology stocks (up 1.9 per cent), and only materials (down 0.2 per cent) tracking lower. The ASX closed 0.3 per cent lower on Wednesday.
Wall Street had a rollercoaster session.Credit: AP
Mineral Resources was the best performer of the large caps, leaping 8 per cent by midday as it added to Wednesday’s 16 per cent jump, while fellow lithium miners Pilbara Minerals (up 5.6 per cent) and Liontown Resources (up 5.4 per cent) were also higher. Lithium stocks globally jumped overnight on speculation Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology halted production at a major mine, easing oversupply concerns for the material.
Among the other miners, BHP lost 1.9 per cent in opening trading, while Fortescue and Rio Tinto had both made gains of 1 per cent in the middle of the session.
Logistics software developer WiseTech led the charge in the information technology sector, up 3.4 per cent, following the strong lead from the US tech giants overnight. The big four banks all grew, led by Westpac, up 1.1 per cent at $32.18 a share.
Packaging group Amcor was the biggest large cap laggard, down 1.7 per cent, followed by lab testing company ALS Ltd and gold miners Newmont, down 1.3 per cent.
Nine Entertainment (the publisher of this masthead) dropped 4.3 per cent after chief executive Mike Sneesby announced his resignation after three and a half years, following what he described as a “challenging” year.Chief financial officer Matt Stanton has been appointed interim chief executive and will lead the search for his successor.
The Aussie dollar was buying US66.75¢ as of 12.24pm AEST.
In the US overnight, the S&P 500 rallied 1.1 per cent after erasing a morning wipeout of 1.6 per cent, one where almost every stock within the index had been falling. A majority of the index’s stocks still finished lower for the day, but the performances by Nvidia and other tech stocks were enough to drive it to a third straight gain and back within 2 per cent of its all-time high set in July.
The Dow Jones rose by 124 points, or 0.3 per cent, after rallying back from a drop of 743 points. The Nasdaq composite jumped 2.2 per cent.
The sharp seesaw trading, where the Nasdaq composite roared back from an earlier 1.4 per cent slide, followed the government’s latest update on inflation at the consumer level. Overall inflation slowed to 2.5 per cent in August from 2.9 per cent in July, a touch better than expected. But prices rose more than expected from July into August when ignoring food and energy, and economists say that can be a better predictor of where inflation is heading.
Altogether, the data seemed to confirm that the Fed will indeed cut its main interest rate at its meeting next week, which would be the first such cut in more than four years. But it bolstered expectations that the Fed will begin with only a traditional-sized move of a quarter of a percentage point instead of the more severe half-point that some had been expecting.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Trump Media & Technology Group sank 10.5 per cent to worsen its rough run since March. The company behind former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform has often risen and fallen with expectations for Trump’s re-election chances, and he’s coming off a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Since closing above $US66 in early March, the stock has tumbled to $US16.68. That affects Trump particularly because he is the company’s largest shareholder.
Besides the 8.1 per cent jump for Nvidia, gains of 2.8 per cent for Amazon, 2.1 per cent for Microsoft and 6.8 per cent for Broadcom were the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. Because these companies are among Wall Street’s largest by market value, their movements pack more punch on the index than almost every other stock.
with AP, Bloomberg
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