Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
a listener production.
Aussie stocks edge higher tentatively ahead of a potential second round of peace talks.
And what should you expect from tomorrow's Aussie jobs data?
Good afternoon, I'm Steve Daglian. I'm Laura Bessarati. It's Wednesday the 15th of April. Welcome to the CommSec Market Update.
Chapter 2: What factors contributed to the cautious rise in Aussie stocks?
A second straight day of improvement, Stevie. I'll certainly take it, even though we're up by just about a tenth of 1% leading into the close. But it could have been worse. We could have been in negative territory.
Chapter 3: What should investors expect from tomorrow's Aussie jobs data?
Absolutely. So some hesitation there, which I think is understandable because we're really closing in on that psychological level. 9,000 points again. We've just kind of been knocking our head up against it at the moment. That does bring us, I guess, one small step closer to record highs as well, despite everything happening globally at the moment.
Yeah, that's a good point. We're about 2% away from recouping all of the declines that we saw in March and about 2.5% away from an all-time high, which we hit in late February. I know it feels like a lifetime ago. We've had a whole war happen in between then and now. But, you know, we are creeping back towards those levels. Yes, you mentioned inflation. We did touch 9000 points.
It looks like we might not end there. And the last time we ended above 9000 points was all the way back on the 3rd of March, which was just days after the conflict began. But for the most part, we've reversed most of the losses that we saw last month at this stage.
Exactly. Roughly 70% to 75% of the declines have already been recouped, which is quite impressive under these circumstances. But what seemed to help us today was the prospect of renewed peace talks between both the US and Iran. Their first effort last weekend didn't go so well. It failed. I mean, they seemed quite positive as far as how they went, 21 hours of talks. It's a long time.
But they still couldn't reach an agreement. And that's ahead of its two-week ceasefire, which is ending next week.
Absolutely. Let's look across the different sectors today because it has been a fairly mixed bag. We are seeing energy stocks down by 2%. Remember, they were the best performers over the course of last month. Some of those are the defensive sectors like utilities and also consumer staples, which also stood out last month, falling back in today's session. Financials almost completely flat.
We're seeing tech, which has been doing quite poorly, very poorly, in fact, down for about eight straight months. It's up by around 2.5% today. Materials, our second largest sector, lifting by around two thirds of 1%. So really a mixed bag. And that's why the market is largely flat, only about a tenth of 1% higher leading into the close.
Yeah, some of the best performers today are gold miners, an area that didn't do so well last month. So gold prices may be edging a little higher in overnight trade, down a little in Asia trade though. Evolution Mining is standing out. It's actually the best on the ASX 200, lifting around 9.5%.
And this is after providing an update to investors today saying that it's still benefiting from those record gold prices that were hit back in Jan. and that it expects to meet its gold production and also cost goals for the year.
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Chapter 4: What impact has the conflict in the Middle East had on the market?
And tomorrow, we've got those job figures, which will be released in Australia at 11.30am. Very important when it comes to interest rate movements in a couple of weeks' time.
Yeah, and the expectation is for 20,000 jobs to be added and the unemployment rate to remain steady at 4.3%.
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