Good morning! It’s Friday, July 12 and I’m thrilled to have your company on our business and markets blog this morning.
It has been quite the night where financial markets are concerned, and it’s all thanks to the latest US inflation data.
Consumer prices came in much lower than expected — in fact, CPI fell by 0.1% in June — and annual inflation came in at 3%, making it the smallest gain since June 2023.
(Economists polled by Reuters had expected CPI increase by 0.1% in June, and by 3.1% over the year.)
That result has fueled speculation that the US Federal Reserve will move to cut interest rates at its September meeting.
Despite the positive news about inflation out of the US, it didn’t translate to Wall Street.
The S&P 500 ended 0.9% lower, while the Nasdaq dropped sharply by 1.9% driven by losses in Nvidia, Apple and Tesla shares as investors opted for smaller companies. The Dow ended with modest gains of 0.1%.
On the local front, the ASX 200 is set to defy those losses on Wall Street, with futures pointing to a rise of about 0.6% as of 7:30am AEST.
The one stock to keep an eye on will be BHP — the mining giant announced late yesterday that it will suspend operations at its troubled nickel operations in WA.
The Big Australian has put the blame on the global oversupply of nickel, and it puts thousands of jobs at risk.
We’ll get stuck into all of this news and bring you even more as it happens on the blog throughout the day — grab a coffee and stick with us.