| Name | Price | Changes | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dow | 43386.84 | 404.41 | 0.94% |
| S&P 500 | 6141.02 | 48.86 | 0.80% |
| Nasdaq | 20167.91 | 194.36 | 0.97% |
| VIX | 16.59 | -0.17 | -1.01% |
| Gold | 3328.2 | -19.8 | -0.59% |
| Oil | 65.4 | 0.16 | 0.25% |
OVERVIEW OF THE US MARKET
Investors drove US stocks to reach all-time highs while setting aside recent geopolitical fears amid hopes that a resumption of Federal Reserve rate cuts will fuel the outloook for Corporate America. Treasury yields fell alongside the dollar.
A nearly $10 trillion surge in the S&P 500 from the edge of a bear market put the gauge briefly above its Feb. 19 closing peak of 6,144.15. The benchmark ended just shy of that mark at 6,141.02. Big tech led gains. A closely watched gauge of stock volatility – the VIX – slid to 16.59 after topping 52 at the height of April’s tariff-fueled turmoil.
As the US stock market nears a fresh all-time high, retail investors are piling into equities. The group purchased a net $3.2 billion of stocks in the five-day period through Wednesday’s close, according to data compiled by JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The Invesco S&P 500 High Beta ETF, an exchange-traded fund that tracks highly volatile stocks, is on track for its best quarter since 2020 relative to the Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF. Meanwhile, a Goldman Sachs gauge of stocks with weak balance sheets is on track for the best month relative to the S&P 500 since September.
Large-cap technology behemoths have been the main drivers of the markets in the past two years. They had a brief hiccup earlier this year when the rise of Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek raised concerns about who will dominate AI, but tech giants are back in the driver’s seat, leading the sharp recovery in the S&P 500 since the tariff selloff.
Bloomberg’s gauge of the US dollar dropped to the lowest level in three years after the Wall Street Journal reported US President Donald Trump may reveal chairman Jerome Powell’s replacement by September or October. Traders are viewing the news as a signal that early rate cuts are becoming more likely, given that Trump has repeatedly pressured Powell to lower borrowing costs.
OVERVIEW OF THE AUSTRALIAN MARKET
Australian shares edged lower on Thursday as investors took profits from technology stocks and bought back into beaten-up lithium miners ahead of the end of the financial year.
The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 fell 8.4 points, or 0.1 per cent, to 8550.8, with seven out of 11 sectors in the red. The broader All Ordinaries index shed 6.3 points to 8773.6.
The focus of investors is returning to Donald Trump’s trade war, with July 9 the next deadline for countries including Australia to strike a deal with the US following the mercurial American president’s April 9 declaration of a 90-day pause on his reciprocal tariffs.
Most of the ASX’s 11 sectors weren’t making big moves on Thursday either. The exception was technology, which dropped 2.1 per cent amid a big fall for its second-biggest component, Xero. The New Zealand based cloud accounting platform dropped 5.3 per cent to a four-week low of $184 after completing a $1.85 billion capital raising to help fund its $3.9 billion acquisition of US payments firm Melio. Fellow tech stocks Life360 and TechnologyOne shed 1.8 per cent and 1.1 per cent to $30.84 and $39.98 respectively.
The iron ore giants had a quiet day, with BHP flat at $36.12, Rio Tinto edging 0.1 per cent lower at $104.19 and Fortescue rising 0.3 per cent to $14.93.
In the financial sector, the big four banks finished mixed. ANZ gained 2.2 per cent to $29.74 and Westpac rose 0.1 per cent to $34.57, while NAB dipped 0.4 per cent to $39.89 and Commonwealth Bank dropped 0.4 per cent to $190.71 after closing at an all-time high on Wednesday.
Gold edged higher to $US333.98 an ounce as the US dollar dipped and traders weighed a truce in the Middle East. Still, miners of the precious metal were mostly lower, with Northern Star down 2.3 per cent to $18.84 and Regis Resources dropping 1.5 per cent to $4.49.
Copper also extended gains for a fifth session after Goldman Sachs said it expected the price to rise to a 2025 peak of around $US10,050 a tonne in August as supplies outside the US tighten