ASX slides lower; Oil falls after Trump backs down

The Australian sharemarket has slid lower at the open with heavier losses averted after US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he’s holding off on delivering new strikes on Iran.

The S&P/ASX 200 was down 29.8 points, or 0.3 per cent, in early trade, with 10 of 11 industry sectors in negative territory, with only utilities in the green. Futures had predicted a loss of more than 1 per cent, but they were set on Saturday before Trump backed down after Tehran and other Middle Eastern powers told him they’re working on an agreement that might quickly reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump said he’d agreed to cancel the attack, “subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL” to quickly reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to a post on Truth Social. “Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE.”

The latest developments sent oil prices falling, with Brent, the international standard, shedding 4.6 per cent and WTI oil for September falling 4.7 per cent in early Asian trade. Energy stocks lost ground in early trade, with Woodside and Santos each shedding 1.5 per cent.

Mining stocks are mixed with BHP edging up 0.1 per cent while Rio Tinto dipped 0.1 per cent and Fortescue fell 1.9 per cent. Gold miners are mixed too, with Northern Star losing 0.5 per cent and Evolution Mining adding 1 per cent.

Financial stocks lost ground with Commonwealth Bank down 0.9 per cent, National Australia Bank falling 0.6 per cent, Westpac declining 0.7 per cent and ANZ Bank retreating 0.2 per cent.

Technology stocks are mixed with WiseTech slipping 0.4 per cent, NEXTDC falling 1.3 per cent and Technology One losing 0.8 per cent, but Xero gained 0.6 per cent and Lifer360 inched up 0.1 per cent.

The Australian dollar was trading at US70.42¢ at 10.07am AEST.

On Wall Street on Friday, the S&P 500 climbed 0.7 per cent after veering between gains and losses through the day. The Dow Jones added 276 points, or 0.5 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 1 per cent after briefly losing all of an early 1.3 per cent jump.

It’s a fitting finish to July for the US stock market, which lurched up and down as oil prices shot higher because of the war with Iran and worries grew about whether Big Tech’s massive investments in artificial-intelligence technology will translate into profits and whether chipmaker stocks soared too high in the euphoria around AI.

Friday’s gains sent the S&P 500 to its first winning week in three, but the main measure of the US stock market nevertheless finished the month with a tiny loss.

Amazon led the market with a leap of 15.3 per cent after reporting much stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its profit more than tripled from a year earlier, thanks in part to an acceleration of growth in its cloud computing business.

Analysts said that could be a signal Amazon’s huge AI investments are paying off, and Amazon increased its forecast for how much it will spend on investments this year.

The reaction was similar to what Microsoft got a day before, when its stock soared to its best day in nearly 18 years on signals that its AI investments may also be yielding higher profits.

Chip companies selling the processors and computer memory that such “hyperscalers” are scrambling to buy swung sharply again on Friday. Micron Technology, for example, went from an early jump of 6.4 per cent to a loss of 6.5 per cent before finishing with a fall of 5.9 per cent.

More firmly on the losing end of Wall Street was Apple, which dropped 7.4 per cent despite reporting stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. Its forecast for revenue growth in the current quarter fell short of expectations, which executives pinned on a supply crunch in components getting vacuumed up in the AI boom.

Meanwhile, a selloff in US Treasuries last week signalled the need for the Federal Reserve to earn its inflation-fighting “credibility” with interest rate increases, St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem told the Financial Times.

“At this juncture, earlier, incremental, gradual interest-rate action is preferable, less costly and less disruptive than potentially later, larger and abrupt actions,” Musalem, who is not a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee this year, told the FT.

Musalem, who sits on the rate-setting body, told the newspaper he had “expressed a preference” towards a quarter-percentage-point interest rate increase at this week’s policy meeting, where the Fed left rates unchanged.

The interest rate decision and a hint from Fed chief Kevin Warsh that the central bank may look to change its inflation goal posts helped send 30-year Treasury yields above 5.2 per cent, a 19-year high.

Warsh has told financial markets that he does not want to give hints about what the Fed will do with interest rates, saying he wants to get direct, “unfiltered” messages from them rather than echoes back of what the Fed has suggested.

But “without clarifying why action was or wasn’t taken already, it’s hard to see how statements about being committed to hitting its inflation target aren’t just a bluff,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.

“The Fed is facing a growing credibility problem,” economists at Bank of America wrote in a report. Unless data comes in showing less pressure on inflation in the interim, “it is imperative for the Fed to pass the September test by hiking rates and delivering an internally consistent narrative.

With AP, Bloomberg, Reuters

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