ASX finishes in the green as US losses ease; IT, property stocks gain

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

The numbers

The Australian sharemarket finished higher on Thursday as the pace of declines slowed on Wall Street overnight from a frenetic sell-off in the previous session.

The S&P/ASX 200 closed up 31.9 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 7982.4, with technology, real estate and bank stocks keeping the bourse afloat following heavy losses on Wednesday, when the local market slumped 1.9 per cent.

Traders are cautious ahead of a key report on the health of the US economy later this week.Credit: Bloomberg

The lifters

Data centre operator NextDC was at the top of the index in final trading, with gains of 8.4 per cent, with the sector getting new attention following Aussie data centre operator AirTrunk’s $23 billion sale to US financial behemoth Blackstone this week.

The stock was followed by New Zealand-based data centre owner Infratil (up 3.8 per cent) and ANZ, which rose 2.6 per cent to $31.25 a share, on a day on which the big four banks and Macquarie Group all made gains.

REA Group shares were up 2.4 per cent on a strong day for real estate stocks, with Goodman and Scentre also finishing higher, and office property fund Charter Hall up 5 per cent at the close.

Shares in TPG Telecom edged higher (1.8 per cent) after its regional network sharing deal with Optus was given the final tick from the competition watchdog on Thursday.

The laggards

Oil giant Woodside shrank the most of the large caps, dropping 6.8 per cent as oil prices declined and its shares traded for the first time without the right to its latest dividend. It was followed by miners Mineral Resources, which lost 5.9 per cent.

Coronado Global Resources suffered heavy losses, down 16 per cent after the coal miner slashed its production forecasts due to excessive rains and mechanical repairs on an overland conveyor.

Investment manager Challenger shed 11 per cent after saying private capital firm Apollo cut its stake in the company to 9.9 per cent, from 20.1 per cent previously, to pursue other opportunities.

The lowdown

IG Australia market analyst Tony Sycamore said the ASX 200 had given back a “large chunk” of early gains today as Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock pushed back against expectations of central bank rate cuts while speaking in Sydney on Thursday.

“This comes just a day after the June national accounts showed the Australian economy grew at the slowest pace of annual growth since the early 1990s recession,” he said.

Sycamore said after yesterday’s “bruising” sell-off, he was open to the idea the ASX 200 had “put in place its high for the month [8116 points on Monday] in the first week of trading, just like it did in August”.

Overnight, Wall Street stocks softened and bond yields tumbled after data suggested a further slowdown in America’s labour market.

Global investors are homing in on America’s non-farm payrolls report on Friday, which is a key gauge watched by the Federal Reserve in its rate decisions for the world’s largest economy.

A reading on US job openings, known as JOLTS, published overnight trailed estimates and hit the lowest level since 2021. It sparked an immediate reaction in the bond market, pushing the US two-year note’s yield briefly below the 10-year note as traders built up wagers on a super-sized rate reduction this month.

The S&P 500 closed 0.2 per cent lower at 5,520.07 points. The Nasdaq 100 lost 0.3 per cent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 0.1 per cent. But that’s much more benign than the previous session, when the S&P 500 plunged 2.1 per cent, the Nasdaq was down 3.3 per cent and the Dow lost 1.5 per cent.

Tweet of the day

Quote of the day

“The dire picture of the Australian economy provided by this week’s national accounts produces a conundrum. If the economy is so weak, why are interest rates so high?” asks columnist Stephen Bartholomeusz of the Reserve Bank’s decision to hold off rate cuts, likely until next year.

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