Good morning, and welcome to the ABC’s finance blog! I’ll be your guide this morning.
The share market is likely to start its day higher (ASX futures are pointing to a 0.4% gain in morning trade).
It comes after yesterday’s 1.2% drop on the ASX 200, as the benchmark index recorded its worst trading session of the new year.
The Australian dollar is still hovering around 61.5 US cents, its weakest level in almost five years.
Spot gold experienced some of the heaviest falls overnight, down 1.1% to $US2,661 an ounce.
The precious metal’s losses were largely in response to the US dollar surging above a two-year high (due to a stronger-than-expected set of job figures, which cemented expectations the Federal Reserve will slow down its pace of interest rate cuts this year).
I’ve also some bad news for motorists who are closely watching the oil price.
Brent crude has jumped another 1.6% overnight to its highest level in more then four months ($US81 a barrel).
The cause of the oil price spike was new US sanctions on Russian oil (which may cause India and Russia to buy oil from other sources, so it may lead to tighter supplies worldwide).
Wall Street tech sell-off continues
This follows another lacklustre session on Wall Street as investors continued to dump high-flying tech stocks like Nvidia (-2.7%), Apple (-1.4%), Meta (-1.5%) and Palantir (-4.8%).
The Nasdasq Composite fell 0.8%, while the broader S&P 500 was down 0.1%.
However, the Dow Jones index bucked the trend with its 0.7% gain.
That’s after investors sold off technology stocks, which are starting to look a little overvalued, and put their money into other companies that are ‘better value’ (on a price to earnings comparison).
Non-technology stocks like Caterpillar (+3.2%), JPMorgan Chase (+1.6%) and UnitedHealth (+4.3%) benefited most from this sector rotation.
