ASX takes a breather to finish flat; Qantas gains despite strike action

Welcome to your five-minute recap of the trading day.

The numbers

The Australian sharemarket closed slightly higher on Wednesday, despite giving up some of its early gains, tracking a quiet day of mixed trading on Wall Street.

The S&P/ASX 200 finished up 10.3 points, or 0.1 per cent, at 8216, with seven of the 11 industry sectors in the green. Consumer staples and mining stocks were among the top performers.

Wall Street edged higher in a quiet session.Credit: AP

The Australian dollar strengthened. It was 0.4 per cent higher at US66.77 at 4.58pm AEDT.

The lifters

Qantas was one of the top performers of the day, gaining 3.4 per cent even as hundreds of its engineers started a 24-hour strike in a bid to force management to negotiate their pay demands. The airline said it didn’t expect the action to affect customers.

Mining heavyweights BHP (up 0.6 per cent) and Fortescue Metals (up 1.2 per cent) finished stronger. The big four banks were also in the green, bolstering the broader market, although their gains were limited to 0.1 per cent to 0.4 per cent.

Supermarket giants Woolworths and Coles rose 1.5 per cent and 1.4 per cent, respectively. The supermarket giants announced they will fight allegations they tricked customers with fake discounts, claiming the competition watchdog’s cases against them are misconceived.

The laggards

Mineral Resources was one of the worst performers of the trading session, closing down 5 per cent. The stock was falling for the third day after the company said it had launched an investigation into an alleged tax evasion scheme involving its billionaire founder Chris Ellison.

Domain shares fell 3.2 per cent after the real estate portal announced its chief executive Jason Pellegrino will step down after six years, sparking another succession hunt at parent company Nine, which owns 60 per cent of Domain. It’s the latest high-profile departure at Nine, which has included the exits of Nine chair Peter Costello and chief executive Mike Sneesby. Nine Entertainment shares remained unchanged.

QBE shed 0.4 per cent after Australia’s largest insurer was sued by the corporate regulator, which is accusing of misleading customers with false promises about discounts over five years. ASIC said it’s taking the company to court for potentially “eroding” the discounts received by more than 500,000 customers for its car, home and general insurance products between 2017 and 2022.

The lowdown

“It’s been an interesting year” for sharemarkets so far, said Gemma Dale, director of self-managed super funds and investor behaviour at nabtrade – and one that proved the merits of investing in a range of different assets and industries.

“It has been one of those years that tells a strong story about diversification because the strongest performers have all been those companies and sectors that were not expected to perform particularly well,” she said.

“If you step back and see what’s been happening, the really strong performers are not what you would anticipate,” Dale explained. “Qantas is just another example.”

Wednesday’s modest session on the local sharemarket came after a broad sell-off on Tuesday, which saw the ASX slump nearly 1.7 per cent as steam came out of Wall Street’s long, record-breaking rally.

On Tuesday, the S&P 500 in the US edged down by less than 0.1 per cent. It was a tiny loss, but it still marked the first back-to-back drop for the index in a month and a half.

The Dow Jones slipped 6 points, or less than 0.1 per cent. Like the S&P 500, it’s been on a long, record-breaking rally and set its all-time high on Friday. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.2 per cent.

General Motors jumped 10.4 per cent for its best day since 2020 after delivering stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It benefited from stronger sales to individual US customers, even as sales slowed to large fleet buyers.

Philip Morris was another one of the strongest forces pushing upward on the S&P 500 and rallied 10.5 per cent after topping forecasts for both profit and revenue.

Trump Media & Technology Group jumped another 9.9 per cent to bring its gain to 183 per cent since hitting a bottom late last month. The company behind former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform is still losing money, but it tends to move more with the perceived chances of Trump’s reelection than anything else. It’s back above $US34, but still well below its peak above $US66 reached in March.

Quote of the day

“We’ve been saying for a number of years this issue of failing to deliver on pricing promises is a critical one for the industry,” ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court said in reference to QBE Insurance – Australia’s largest insurer – potentially facing a multimillion-dollar penalty.

The corporate regulator launched Federal Court proceedings over allegations the insurer did not pass on the full discounts promised to more than half a million loyal customers over a five-year period, arguing its pricing mechanism eroded the discounts customers should have received between 2017 and 2022.

You may have missed

Financial markets are making bets who’s going to win the US election in November – and as Stephen Bartholomeusz writes, investors are flagging a Trump victory as the “Trump trades” kick up a notch.

With AP

The Market Recap newsletter is a wrap of the day’s trading. Get it each weekday afternoon.