- The ASX will open higher today after a tech driven rally on Wall Street
- S& 500 and Nasdaq at highest level since April 2022
- Crude oil prices tumbled another -4% overnight
Aussie shares are set to open higher on Tuesday after the King’s Birthday break as US stocks continued their rally.
At 8am AEST, the ASX 200 index futures was pointing up by +0.4%.
Overnight, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes closed 1% and 1.5% higher respectively to their highest levels since April 2022.
Stock markets have been rising as traders gear up for a potential pause or even an end to the Fed’s most-aggressive tightening campaigns in decades this week.
The FOMC will convene later today for the first of a two-day meeting that will decide on rates. The market consensus is for the board to take a break from an interest-rate rising campaign that started 15 months ago, even as US inflation continues to be persistently sticky.
“The numbers just won’t support any further tightening, and this will become clearer in the next few weeks,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
To stock news, Carnival Cruise was the best performer overnight, up by 12.5% as JPMorgan and Bank of America upgraded the cruise operator.
But it was Big Tech that drove most of the gains, with Apple closing at its first all time high since January 2022.
“Apple has a roadmap people are comfortable with, it has unbelievable cash flow, and you can’t do better than this incredible business model,” said Wayne Kaufman, chief analyst at Phoenix Financial Services.
In other markets …
Crude oil prices tumbled another -4% overnight.
“Traders are not buying the oil deficit story,” said OilPrice’s oil analyst, Irina Slav.
“The initial price jump that the production cut announcement from OPEC+ caused has fizzled out less than a day after the announcement.”
Over the past six weeks, institutional traders have reduced their positions in crude oil and fuels by 238 million barrels, the lowest position since 2013.
Gold was steady at US$1,957.25 an ounce.
Bitcoin meanwhile was down -0.5% in the last 24 hours to US$25,897.
Four of the 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies have fallen by at least 15% over the past week as SEC Chair Gary Gensler dramatically escalated his war on cryptos.
5 ASX small caps to watch today
Toys’R’Us ANZ (ASX:TOY)
TOY announced the appointment of Penny Cox as its new CEO. A Cambridge graduate, Cox’s international career includes roles in the UK, Australia, and South East Asia with LEK Consulting, Ocado, Coles, Redmart, Alibaba & Carousell. In the four years of her role as VP Commercial & Marketing at Redmart, revenue grew 20x from $14 million to $285 million per annum.
Adveritas (ASX:AV1)
Adveritas reported record annualised revenue of circa $3.9 million driven by both new contracts and up-sells. The company has now generated over 130% growth in annualised revenue since January 2022. Adveritas says it has successfully executed several new contracts and contract up-sells in the last few weeks.
Genmin (ASX:GEN)
Genmin has been awarded ESG certification by Digbee ESG, an independent, transparent assessment platform endorsed by leading global financiers.The overall score awarded by Digbee for Genmin’s 100% owned Baniaka iron ore project located in Gabon was “BB”. The name “Baniaka Green” has also been trademarked to promote brand recognition of Genmin’s suite of greener iron ore products in global markets.
IperionX (ASX:IPX)
IperionX has agreed a Scope of Work with NYSE-listed Ford Motor Company for the supply of titanium metal components using IperionX’s 100% recycled, low-carbon titanium metal. Ford and IperionX have been actively collaborating to design, test and additively manufacture a series of high-quality titanium components for future Ford Performance production vehicles such as the F150 Raptor, Bronco Raptor, Mustang Mach 1 and the Shelby GT500.
Lycopodium (ASX:LYL)
Lycopodium announced the formal execution of the Feasibility Study and Basic Engineering Agreement with Barrick Gold for the Reko Diq Copper-Gold Project in Pakistan. The contract for the scope of the project is valued in the vicinity of $55 million. Lycopodium will partner with Barrick to deliver the overall Feasibility Study for both Phase 1 (processing capacity of 40 mtpa) and Phase 2 (increased throughput to 80 mtpa).
At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While IperionX is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.