Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
a listener production.
The Aussie share market fades from a stronger beginning, but still has ended a losing streak.
And supermarket giants have been in the spotlight.
Good afternoon, I'm Steve Daglian.
I'm Laura Bessarati.
It's Thursday the 14th of May.
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Chapter 2: What were the main movements in the Australian share market today?
Welcome to the CommSec Market Update.
Well, Stevie, it's been hard to tell which way the market's going. One minute it's up, the next minute it's down. At the moment, lifting ever so slightly up by roughly a tenth of 1%. At our worst levels, though, we were down by around a third of 1%. So there hasn't been much movement. We have barely budged.
But if we do manage to cross the finish line in the green, that means we could potentially put an end to four straight sessions of losses.
Yeah, we were up a little more than that earlier in the day. We're up about a fifth of 1%. But you're right, it will be good to see the back of this four-day losing streak. We still are down between 2.5% and 3% from last week's peak and roughly 6% below where we were before this conflict between the US and Iran even started in late February.
But yesterday, it was all around the banks weighing heavily on our market. Today, they've managed to bounce back and it's other areas of the market that have weighed more heavily.
Yeah. So, if you look across the four major banks, NAB is the only one that's actually falling down by 1%. But as you point out, you know, CBA has bounced back. It's up by close to 2%. But this is after posting its worst day on record yesterday when it was down by roughly 11% following the
worse than expected results that was its quarterly results it must be said so the financials still bouncing back as a sector up by one percent as we head into the close but on the other side of things tech stocks are doing very poorly down by over two percent so the worst performer by far but consumer staples not too far behind down by 1.9 percent and it's fairly mixed across many of the other sectors
Absolutely. So, quite a messy performance across the market today. None really standing out outside of the financials, which as you pointed out, we're coming off the back of some pretty significant declines. But let's look at some stocks because there's quite a bit of company news around today. One stock that did quite well is actually the ASX, the stock market operator.
It's up in the order of 2%. Appointed a new boss, Anthony Attia, who is going to step into the new role in September. I He's an executive from Euronext, which operates European share markets. And he actually served as the chief executive of the French market, Euronext Paris, for a seven-year period.
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Chapter 3: How did the banking sector perform after recent losses?
So that's one thing to be on the lookout for. Now, I mentioned tech stocks, of course, have been under pressure, but it certainly could have been worse if it wasn't for one stock in particular, which is Megaport. It's been the outperformer on the broader market today, one of them at least. And its shares are up 28%.
This is after announcing a major new AI-related infrastructure contract through its Latitude business. So it told investors it has actually secured three major contracts for computing, network and storage. This is across two customers. worth approximately $90.6 million, which essentially underscores strong demand for computing power linked to artificial intelligence.
So it shares surging to a five-month high today.
So I mentioned that Grain Corp was the worst performer on the ASX 200. Going a bit broader than that on the All Ordinaries Index, which looks at 500 large companies, Bapcor is the worst performer. It is down 18.5%. It is one of the largest vehicle parts, accessories, and equipment providers across the region. It owns the Autobahn retail chains and Midas as well.
So basically, it said that trading conditions have deteriorated materially since late March due to the Middle East conflict. So that's been raising freight, fuel supply cost as well. Interest rate hikes we've had recently, we've had three already this year, not helping as well. So it's basically reduced its profit targets quite significantly for the year.
A couple more quick ones from me. One is professional services business Wall-E, which is lifting by around 2% after it announced a new $300 million stock buyback. But this follows the end to a $500 million buyback just three weeks ago. And I will also point out that Solpats is paying out a dividend today, $0.48 per share for those eligible.
Yeah. Air New Zealand, I will quickly mention, it's down around 4%. It warned investors of the impact of surging jet fuel prices on its bottom line due to the Middle East conflict. It basically said that jet fuel prices were sitting at between $85 and $90 US per barrel before the escalation of the conflict.
But over the past 10 weeks, they've been paying prices, you know, prices are up around $160 to $230 per barrel. So that's about 2.7 times from low to high.
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Chapter 4: What factors contributed to the performance of tech stocks today?
So that's basically meant that the company's flagging a bit of a loss for the year. And it reckons its second half jet fuel costs could come in almost at a billion New Zealand dollars. So locally listed Qantas and also Virgin both down as well.
Now, the Trump-Xi summit is very much underway. I've been watching it on all the TV broadcasts and in all of the headlines today. So trade, tariffs, the Iran war, all topics of conversation during this two-day meeting between the world's two largest economies. So investors are going to be watching this very, very closely.
Yeah, we've got a day left of trade as well. We're down 1.2% now since the start of the week, so it'll have to be a pretty good day to turn that around. But I think that ends it. Have a great evening, everyone, and make sure you tune in for the morning podcast tomorrow.
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