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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
a listener production.
Chapter 2: Why did the ASX experience a significant drop on June 4th?
Is our market's big drop today enough to wipe out this year's gains? And why did mining stocks just post their largest decline in weeks? Good afternoon, I'm Steve Daglian. It's Thursday, the 4th of June. Welcome to the CommSec Market Update. Well, an ugly day for the Aussie share market.
In fact, the ASX 200 is down around 100 points. That's a fall of 1.1% on Thursday to about 8,686 points. So that is more than enough to wipe out Wednesday's lift, which actually saw our share market touching a near four-week high as well.
Chapter 3: What factors contributed to the decline of mining stocks today?
It also means that that 8,800 point mark, which we cracked for the first time since the 8th of May just yesterday, seems like a long way away now as well. And it's also enough just slightly to push our market into the red for the year. So we're down by around 0.4% now since the start of the 2026 calendar year.
Chapter 4: How are geopolitical tensions affecting market performance?
Now, a few things at play here. One is the fact that US markets slumped overnight by as much as 1.2%, and also futures are pointing to a potential sluggish start to the trading session tonight as well. Now, keep in mind, despite this, markets in the US did hit record highs just a day earlier. Secondly, Chipmaker Broadcom, which is considered to be one of the competitors to NVIDIA,
It fell shy of Wall Street expectations with its revenues yesterday for the quarter. And also it gave a weak forecast for the coming quarter as well. That seems to have kind of dented momentum at least for a day of this AI trade, which has been one of the key drivers of the US share market. So the US market year to date is up around 10%. as I said, our market is now slightly negative.
And part of this has had to do with the big tech sector over in the United States. So outside of a few markets like the Japanese market, which is up more than 30% this year, and South Korea's market, the KOSPI index there has more than doubled in 2026, has even a bigger tech sector than the United States as far as the share of tech of its entire market.
But the US market certainly has been driven by many of these tech stocks. Now, Outside of that, we've also had flaring tensions in the Middle East with both the US and Iran trading a new round of airstrikes that seems to have offset reports of an Israel-Lebanon ceasefire. So across the sectors today, there are a couple of areas that are really being hit hard. and this includes the mining sector.
Now, the materials are down by more than 3% today. Mind you, this has certainly been one of the better areas of our share market. They've just had a four-day winning streak, so you've got to take that into account, but they're also up in the order of 18% this year, even when you take into account today's declines. Now, energy stocks are doing a half a percent at the moment.
And this is following those escalating Middle East tensions. So that basically saw the price of oil shooting up by as much as two and a half percent last night to around $96 per barrel. The US dollar also rose. And that has been a weight on many other commodities like gold, which fell last night by about 1.5%. Iron ore, which has dropped around 1.5% as well.
This is one of the reasons why we're seeing some declines across some of these big mining stocks and improvements in the energy sector, which is benefiting from the firmer oil price. So we are seeing stocks like BHP and Rio down more than 3% today. And this is after hitting record highs just yesterday.
So something that's important to note here when we look at these big mining stocks is that, yes, they're down heavily today, but we've got Rio up almost 30% this year and BHP, the largest stock on our market, is up almost 40% year to date. So it is coming off the back of significant highs. Outside of those sectors, we've got the financials down about three quarters of a percent.
That is weight, tech, telcos. They're also in negative territory. And a few areas that are standing out consumer staples, which is considered to be a bit of a defensive area, and also the utilities, which is up around 1.3%. And healthcare, which has been one of the hardest hit since the start of the year. So market's certainly retreating and feeling a bit more cautious in trade tonight.
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Chapter 5: What impact did the US market have on Australian stocks?
Now, It also said it's aiming to reduce annual costs by about $100 million by its 2029 financial year. Now, a reminder that a couple of years ago, it tried to actually offload and sell some of its lower cost mass market brands, brands like Wolf Blast and Lindemans, for example, but couldn't really find a suitable buyer that it was happy with.
Elsewhere, we've got Ampol lifting by more than 4% today. Now, it actually had a target price upgrade by a broker. This is where they think the share price might be in 12 months' time from here. And this was a day after receiving the ACCC's go-ahead for a $1.1 billion acquisition of a group called EG Australia yesterday.
So this means that it effectively nearly doubles its retail sites in Australia. and means that the combination of both Ampol and EG will give it roughly a 25% market share here in Australia. We've also got some other stocks lifting today, including Endeavor, which owns a number of well-known brands in that liquor space, including Dan Murphy's and BWS.
Brambles, the pallet maker, is also up around 3.5%, and Tillix Pharmaceuticals is lifting by more than 5%. Now, there are plenty of losers today. One of them is actually Paladin, which is down by more than 8%. This is a uranium miner, but we've got to remember that yesterday it surged by more than 11%. So it is coming off the back of a pretty sizable improvement.
Now, there were gains of many of these uranium miners yesterday on news that a major international player was significantly expanding commercial levels of uranium. And this is for use in nuclear power plants. This is to offset a ban on Russian imports, which is expected to kick in from 2028. We've also got some gold miners doing quite poorly off the decline in gold prices I mentioned earlier.
So Northern Star is down by around 5%. Many other gold miners also being sold off as well. And I've already mentioned Rio and BHP and a few other miners in that space taking a bit of a hit and profit-taking perhaps as well from those record highs hit a day earlier. We've got ProMedicus down slightly.
The companies did sign a five-year $16 million contract where it's basically renewing the use of its imaging software at a the Ohio State University Medical Center over in the United States. So this medical center employs more than 22,000 staff and has 2,000 doctors working there, six hospitals as well.
Now, the shares are down slightly today, but we've got to remember that on Monday and Tuesday combined, it rose by about 20%. And I will also just mention LendLease, the property group. It's down another 3% today. Had another difficult session, just for those who forgot, it fell by about 5% just yesterday.
Now, a couple of days ago, it warned that it would take a $175 million loss from the sale of a property development was working on in Milan, Italy. And this is part of its plan to reduce its global footprint and better focus on Australia.
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