It’s days like these the image of Sisyphus endlessly pushing his boulder up the hill come to mind.
Mercurial as always, market sentiment has shifted once again, lifting US markets and smoothing a promising runway for the ASX’s performance today.
ASXFutures are up 1.1% or 85 points as of 8:30am AEST – with a host of company earnings reports expected in the next few hours, plus consumer and producer prices data out of China, it could be another rollercoaster of a day.
US and European markets
The S&P500 had its best day since November 2022, riding chip making shares higher alongside a strong showing in other major tech stocks.
Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO, ETR:1YD) added 6.95%, Intel Corp (NASDAQ:INTC, ETR:INL) 7.90% and Nvidia 6.13%. Meta also climbed 4.2% and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) notched a 1.7% uptick.
Zepbound weight loss drug manufacturer Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) jumped 9.5% after raising its sales for the year, earning US$1 billion from Zepbound alone.
Popular sportswear brand Under Armour stock surged 19.2% after surprising analysts with a first quarter profit, having successfully cut costs and increased revenue by cutting inventory and promotions.
The Dow Jones lifted 1.8% or 683 points, the S&P500 2.3% and the Nasdaq 464 points or 2.9%.
In Europe, markets were less exuberant. Healthcare stocks lifted the bourses with a 1% bump, driven up by gains by British drugmaker Hikma Pharmaceuticals, which lifted 8.3% on positive annual forecasts.
Novo Nordisk (CSE:NOVOb) (NYSE:NVO) recovered some of its losses from earlier in the week, lifting 4.3%, benefiting from Eli Lilly’s strong numbers.
The FTSE300 posted a 0.1% gain, but major UK stocks like AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) (-0.49%) and Standard Chartered (LON:STAN) (-2.44%) trading ex-dividend drove the FTSE100 down 0.3%.
Currencies and commodities
The Aussie dollar strengthened against the US dollar overnight, lifting from US$0.6542 to near US$0.6590 at close. The Euro and Japanese Yen went in the other direction; the Euro fell from US$1.0944 to near US$1.0920 and the Yen from JPY145.63 per US dollar to near JPY147.20 at US close.
Oil rose for a third day. Brent crude lifted by US$0.83, or 1.1%, to US$79.16 per barrel and US Nymex by US$0.96, or 1.3%, to US$76.19 per barrel.
Base metals were mixed.
Expectations of higher consumption of copper in China pushed futures up 0.2%, but declining steelmaking production at the industrial city of Tangshan pushed iron ore down US$0.96, or 0.9%, to US$100.75 per tonne and aluminium futures fell 0.5%.
Gold recovered its upward momentum after a wobbly couple of days, up US$30.90, or 1.3%, to US$2,463.30 per ounce and spot gold was trading near US$2,425 per ounce at the market close.
On the small cap front
The ASX Small Ordinaries fell a full 31.8 points or 1.09% yesterday, following the ASX200 down as it shed 0.34% on weak mining and real estate stocks.
You can read about the following and more throughout the day on our website.