Note: Figures recorded at 7:45am AEDT. The closing figures and video recording will be available at 9:00am AEDT.
Stocks wavered on Tuesday as a recent rally on Wall Street lost steam.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 64 points, or 0.2%. The S&P 500 hovered around its flatline, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.3%.
GitLab popped 13% after the open-source software development platform beat quarterly financial expectations and issued strong guidance for the current quarter. Nio climbed more than 2% after the Chinese electric vehicle maker reported narrowing losses in the third quarter.
Tuesday’s moves follow Monday’s losing session, which called into question whether the market had run up too far too fast. Monday’s pullback came on the heels of five consecutive positive weeks for the three major averages.
Despite their recent performance, the three indexes are still up on the quarter and year. That underscores the strength of the market’s rally leading up to the current trading week.
Stocks came off session lows on Tuesday as the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield fell below the key 4.2% level on the back data signaling cooling in the labour market. Technology shares were boosted in particular, pushing the Nasdaq into positive territory for the session.
The Russell 2000 fell more than 1% on Tuesday, reversing course after bucking the downtrend on Monday. Still, the small-cap index has jumped nearly 7% over the past month, raising hopes of a broadening market rally and interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve on the horizon.
Shifting to the Australian landscape, a sharp decrease in coal and LNG exports has led to Australia experiencing a balance of payments deficit, which is expected to drive the annual economic growth rate below 2 percent for the first time since the pandemic recession in 2020.
Economists are revising their forecasts for the September-quarter national accounts, with expectations of a 0.5 percent expansion. If this outcome aligns with expectations, it would result in the annual GDP growth rate dropping to 1.9 percent, marking the first time GDP has expanded by less than 2 percent annually since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
Figures around the globe
European markets closed mixed. London’s FTSE lost 0.31 per cent, Frankfurt gained 0.78 per cent, and Paris closed 0.74 per cent higher.
Turning to Asian markets, Tokyo’s Nikkei fell 1.37 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.91 per cent while China’s Shanghai Composite closed 1.67 per cent lower.
The Australian share market closed 0.89 per cent lower at 7,061.55.
Sources: Bloomberg, FactSet, IRESS, TradingView, UBS, Bourse Data, Trading Economics, CoinMarketCap.
