A significant 60-plus point decline is expected for today’s reopening of trading on the ASX, following Wall Street’s sell-off and the local market’s 64-point slide the same day.
Friday’s sell-off deepened after Wall Street’s decline on Thursday, as the global CrowdStrike/Microsoft computer outage erupted around 3 p.m. Sydney time on Friday.
The ASX’s markets and pricing services were disrupted, and ASX technical staff and external advisers worked over the weekend to restore them.
The ASX 200 showed no impact from the outage after 3 p.m., but no announcements were published past 3:22 p.m. on Friday.
The ASX 200 fell 64.9 points, or 0.8%, to end the week at 7971.6, marking a gain of just 0.15% for the week.
The ASX 200 is now 110 points down from its all-time high close of 8,081 on July 10.
The coming week will be dominated by the fallout from the global CrowdStrike/Microsoft outage, the rise of Trump and his aggressive stance towards countries like Taiwan, updates on U.S. inflation, and the implications for interest rate cuts from the Fed.
Additionally, U.S. quarterly earnings reports continue to flow, but Wall Street is now shifting focus from megacap tech stocks to seeking safety and value lower down the S&P 500 index.
Locally, there will be more quarterly reports from miners of all sizes.
One damp squib last week was the local listed arm of Domino’s Pizza. Cuts to store numbers in Japan and France, a weak trading update, and a pullback in its major expansion plans saw the shares lose 6.5% over the week, despite a 1.8% rise on Friday (which was against the trend).
The news did not help the U.S. arm, which saw its shares fall 17% for the week due to the store number reductions.
Although the global pizza chain reported quarterly results above expectations, it has revised its previous forecast of adding 1,100 stores per year between 2024 and 2028 to an estimated range of 825 to 925 units.
The company aims to remain cautious in an unfavorable economic climate and has also re-announced store closures in France and Japan.
