Top 10 at 11: Green open places ASX in touching distance of all-time high

Morning, and welcome to Stockhead’s Top 10 (at 11… ish), highlighting the movers and shakers on the ASX in early-doors trading.

With the market opening at 10am sharp eastern time, the data is taken at 10:15, once trading kicks off in earnest.

In brief, this is what the markets have been up to this morning.

Mixed Wall Street performance

It was a mixed performance on Wall Street overnight, with semiconductor stocks powering the Nasdaq into the green while the other indices fell or remained essentially flat.

ON Semiconductor CEO Hassan El-Khoury signalled the industry was showing signs of recovery at the Bank of America Global Technology Conference.

“We’re expecting growth driven by our penetration and our success that we’ve had in EVs in China, but we’re also going to benefit from a broad-based recovery based on the signs that we see even for the second half of this year,” he said.

The stock jumped 6.1%, followed by several of its peers. Those included Broadcom, which added 1.65% to hit a new all-time high.

Nvidia gained 0.5%, NXP Semiconductors 5.6%, and AMD and Micron Technology about 1% each. Industry leading Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC jumped 4.2%.

Unfortunately, the tech stock wins came against a backdrop of a slow down in US economic data.

Trump has another go at Powell

Private sector hiring slowed to its lowest pace in over two years, transitioning into its fourth contraction period in five years. The services sector also contracted for the first time in nearly a year.

Trump predictably took aim at the US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, railing at him to cut interest rates and dubbing him with the moniker ‘Too Late Powell’ in his latest effort to influence Central Bank policy.

The two met at the White House last week to discuss said monetary policy, but by the sounds of things it didn’t go well.

According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Trump told Powell he was “making a mistake by not lowering interest rates, which is putting us at an economic disadvantage to China and other countries.”

In an official Federal Reserve statement released after the meeting, the Central Bank insisted that monetary policy must be guided by economic data, based on “careful, objective, and non-political analysis.”

Another strong open for ASX

After lifting more than 0.8% yesterday, the ASX has had another strong start to the morning’s trade, adding 0.28% as of about 10:30 am AEST.

Bullish sentiment from the US on the tech and semiconductor front has translated to a 0.75% boost to the Aussie Info Tech sector this morning, followed closed by Real Estate (+0.63%) and Consumer Discretionary (+0.50%).

Only Industrials (-0.05%) and Utilities (-0.13%) are on the wrong side of the balance sheet at present, with 9 of 11 sectors in the green.

The ASX 200 Resources index is also performing well, up 0.36% on strength in an eclectic collection of rare earth, gold and lithium stocks.

WINNERS

In the news…

AXP Energy (ASX:AXP) has achieved what it described as “reliable system uptime” for its gas-to-Bitcoin mining operation, using an oil and gas wells in the Pathfinder field of Colorado to power a bitcoin mining site.

With the off-grid gas-to-power site now operational, the company is looking to roll out its technology in additional locations to support the bitcoin mining sector.

Greentech Metals (ASX:GRE) unearthed bonanza-grade gold mineralisation in historical assays at its Whundo project, where its exploring for copper, zinc and gold.

The company has uncovered more than a dozen gold intersections grading more than 1 g/t, peaking with a 1-metre intersection at 64.7 g/t gold from just 47 metres of depth.

LAGGARDS

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