ASX set to fall as Wall Street retreats from records, oil rises; News Corp results
Stan Choe
Updated ,first published
While Wall Street fell from its records due to the increasing uncertainty that a peace agreement will be reached in the Middle East, oil prices rose this morning following the increasing tension in the Strait of Hormuz.
The S&P 500 fell 0.4 percent from its all-time high the previous day. The Dow Jones fell 313 points, or 0.6 percent, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.1 percent from its record. The Australian share market is poised for a sharp decline, with futures pointing to a loss of 137 points, or 1.5 percent, at the open. The ASX gained 1 per cent on Thursday. The Australian dollar was trading at 72.12¢.
Oil prices rose this morning, following the latest developments in the Middle East, with US oil rising 2.7 percent to $97.35 per barrel in Asian trade, and the US and Iran hearing mutual gunfire in Hormuz. Brent, the international standard, settled at US$100.06 overnight.
Revenues rose across the board in News Corp’s third-quarter financial report released on Friday morning, but Australian newspapers have lost subscribers in the past three months.
hosting company The Australian, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Harper Collins and REA Group posted a 9 per cent increase in revenue to US$2.19 billion ($3.1 billion) and are on track for record profitability, helped by recent content deals with Meta and OpenAI, CEO Robert Thomson said.
Subscribers to Australian newspapers including: Australian, Herald Sun And Daily Telegraph It fell by 7,000 to 992,000 in the three months ending March 31. The company also launched California Post through New York Post In the quarter, the website’s digital network had seven million fewer visitors compared to last year.
Overnight on Wall Street, Datadog jumped 31.3 percent to lead the US market after its monitoring and security platform for cloud applications beat analysts’ profit expectations in the latest quarter.
Albemarle rose 3 percent after its lithium products and specialty chemicals company also reported better-than-expected results. Taser maker Axon Enterprise rallied 10.6 percent after raising its revenue forecast this year, due in part to big growth in counter-drone products.
On Wall Street’s losing side was Whirlpool, which lost 11.9 percent after reporting much weaker results than analysts expected. The company, which made the biggest price increase for major appliances in North America in a decade, is accelerating cost cuts as it struggles with declining confidence among U.S. consumers.
Shake Shack fell 28.3 percent after its results in the latest quarter fell well below analysts’ expectations.
McDonald’s shares remained stable and lost 0.1 percent after its last quarter revenue exceeded analysts’ expectations. CEO Chris Kempczinski said high gas prices and consumer concerns about the Iran war could hurt sales this spring.
Overall, the S&P 500 fell 28.01 points to 7,337.11 points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average decreased by 313.62 points to 49,596.97, and the Nasdaq composite index decreased by 32.75 points to 25,806.20 points.
In the bond market, Treasury bond yields rose after oil prices eased their decline. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 4.38 percent from 4.36 percent at the end of Wednesday.
Higher yields could increase rates on mortgages and other types of loans to U.S. households and businesses, which could slow the economy. Higher returns also tend to push down the prices of stocks and other types of investments.
Before the war, the 10-year Treasury bond yield was only 3.97 percent.
Many reports on the US economy have been mixed. More U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, but the increase was not as bad as economists expected, one said. Another report suggested that productivity of U.S. workers rose only half as much in the last quarter as economists expected.
Indices in foreign stock markets fell in Europe after the strong closing in Asia. Shares fell 1.5 percent in London and 1.2 percent in Paris.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 5.6 percent as trading in Tokyo resumed after the holiday, matching big gains in Asian markets earlier in the week. It’s up almost 71 percent in the past 12 months, thanks to the strength of tech stocks benefiting from the boom in artificial intelligence.
“I think it’s a bubble of sorts because the buying activity is concentrated on leading AI, AI stocks and semiconductor-related stocks. This is a situation where only semiconductor stocks are being bought,” said Takashi Hiroki, chief strategist at MONEX.
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