Rise and Shine: Everything you need to know before the ASX opens

Good morning everyone and welcome to Rise and Shine on Thursday, October 2, 2025. Here’s what you should know before the ASX opens today…

At 7am AEST on Thursday, ASX futures were up 0.5%, which means we’ll have a crack at a decent start.

Here’s what happened overnight..

Wall Street’s limp victory lap

The Dow scraped out a gain of 0.09%, the S&P 500 tacked on 0.34%, and the Nasdaq added 0.42%.

Nvidia hit fresh record highs. The chipmaker now boasts a market cap north of US$4.5 trillion, bigger than the entire German stock market.

Intel, meanwhile, suddenly found religion after a report it might manufacture chips for AMD.

It’s like Coles deciding to bake bread for Woolies because it’s sick of empty aisles. Investors loved it, sending Intel up more than 7%.

Tesla rallied 3% on nothing more than hope that the bleeding has slowed.

Analysts reckon deliveries for the September quarter will be down about 5% year-on-year, which still stinks but looks a whole lot better than the double-digit falls of the first half. Results are due Thursday.

Meanwhile, the so-called heart of the US economy is wheezing.

The ADP private payrolls data showed a 32,000 job drop, the worst in two-and-a-half years.

US factories data are also contracting for a seventh straight month.

And yet, equities shrugged and pushed higher, because in today’s market logic, bad data means the Fed will cut rates, and rate cuts mean stonks go up.

Uncle Sam shuts the lights

Washington finally plunged into its first government shutdown in seven years.

Agencies were told to “execute their plans for an orderly shutdown,” which sounds like bureaucratic poetry for telling workers to bugger off.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the one group you might actually want in a crisis, has been told to stand down.

So the crucial September jobs report will be delayed.

For the ASX, this is one of those imported headaches.

We rely on US data to set global tone, and without it, markets are left guessing.

Gold laughs last

While politicians bicker, gold is doing what it does best, breaking records.

Overnight, it hit an all-time high just shy of US$3,900 an ounce, its fifth straight day of gains.

That’s a 45% surge this year, its best run since 1979, back when inflation was raging and disco was dying.

Bitcoin’s Uptober fantasy

And then there’s Bitcoin, which decided to join the fun and bounce back above US$118,000.

Crypto bros are calling it “Uptober”, because making up nicknames counts as market insight.

October has been good to Bitcoin 10 of the past 12 years, so naturally the faithful are salivating for another run.

The coin has retreated to US$117,601 at this time of writing.

Commodity/forex/crypto market prices

What got you talking

Also in the news…

The intersection of fintech and crypto – we’ve been here before.

Why the best place to find an iron ore mine is next to an old one.

Biocurious: Behind Optiscan’s quest to ditch biopsies and bring pathology into the modern era.

Health Check: Pfizer rises to the occasion with a ‘most favoured nation’ US drug pricing deal.

Trading halts

Advance Metals (ASX:AVN) – cap raise
Brazilian Critical Minerals (ASX:BCM) – cap raise
E79 Gold Mines (ASX:E79) – cap raise and asset acquisition
Eagers Automotive (ASX:APE) – cap raise
Investigator Resources (ASX:IVR) – cap raise
Theta Gold Mines (ASX:TGM) – funding transaction
Western Yilgarn (ASX:WYX) – cap raise
Xenora Minerals (ASX:XNR) – cap raise

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Riversgold is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.