Weekly Wrap

Canadian miner Barrick Gold topped earnings estimates for the March quarter, bolstered by a rally in bullion prices during the period.

No easy gains are left across the Tasman for the newish conservative National Party-led government, with a sharp rise in unemployment, an unwanted pay rise offered, and a surprise opinion poll showing a swing back to the Labour Party, seven months after it lost office.

The chances rose Tuesday that the European Central Bank will be the first major central bank to cut interest rates, as early as June. This comes after euro area inflation remained unchanged in April at 2.4% (according to the first estimate), and the area returned to economic growth in the three months to March.

Business media got all excited about the quarterly results from Amazon, which were much better than expected. However, the outlook was weaker than expected for another quarter.

For markets, April was like a famous quote from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities – "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times" – starting with promise, running up, and then taking a crunching in the final days of the month.

As suspected by foreign economists, activity across the Chinese economy expanded in April, though at a slower rate than seen in March's rebound.

Origin Energy’s (ASX:ORG) best investment isn’t in Australia – it's the 23% stake in Britain's Octopus Energy, which is going from strength to strength. In fact, Octopus has just become Britain's largest domestic electricity supplier by customer numbers, after the company added 1.3 million accounts following its takeover of Shell Energy late last year. The performance was a standout bright spot for Origin in its March quarterly report out Tuesday.

Alphabet (Google) has transitioned into the sphere of mundane industrials, aligning itself with the likes of Apple and Meta by initiating dividend payments.

The Mag Seven megatech story took a hit as a weak revenue forecast from Meta Platforms caused shares to plunge 16% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, dragging other shares down with them.

In the latest session of the ongoing inquiry probing the Star Group's suitability to hold a casino license, alarming revelations surfaced, painting a bleak picture of the company's current state under existing management and board.

There are some overly optimistic investors in the US—why else would they boost the share price of EV pioneer Tesla after the company reported its worst quarterly performance in more than a decade, revealing a more than halving in profitability in the first three months of the year?

Both Moody’s and Fitch have put China on a negative outlook for its credit rating. S&P Global has taken a different stance, suggesting that the country’s fiscal stimulus is running out of steam and might need to be topped up.

Friday, it was equities that sold off on higher risk, even though there were signs the Israelis had not really retaliated against Iran. Despite that, gold was boosted by a bit of safe-haven buying.

In collaboration with Marketech, their new, free, award-winning Focus platform now comes embedded with all the ShareCafe, Finance News Network and Corporate Connect content.

Tesla shares fell to their lowest level in more than a year on Thursday as shareholder unease grows about plans to try to reinstate Elon Musk’s multi-billion share deal, move the company’s domicile to Texas, and abandon a cheap EV (Tesla 2) for the questionable robotaxi idea.

Yeehaw! Big global investors are at their most confident since January 2022, according to the latest monthly survey from Bank of America. Yet, judging by the changing sentiment on Wall Street, this ebullience may be misplaced.

The correlation between risk and returns is widely accepted. Historically, smaller companies have often outperformed larger ones over extended periods, a principle deeply embedded in investment theory and practice. However, recent market data has cast doubt on this conventional wisdom.

Retail investors have been flocking to relatively new spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, yet they seem to be overlooking gold funds, despite the yellow metal consistently hitting new highs and outperforming Bitcoin over the past month.

Despite a fairly solid Chinese crude steel production figure for March, iron ore prices slid 2.3% in Singapore on Tuesday as uncertainty about the real health of the Chinese economy took hold.

China’s gross domestic product grew 5.3% in the first quarter from the same period in 2023, surpassing conservative forecasts of around 4.6% to 5%. However, it was only marginally ahead of the 5.2% rate recorded in the final quarter of 2023.

The higher for longer narrative gains traction as US consumer data holds steady and markets hit all time highs. The late cycle AI heated market rally may be cause for concern, but the more urgent risk for investors is an economy with falling yields and sticky inflation.

A respected industry forecaster has strongly suggested that peak steel demand in China may have already occurred.

A significant week awaits Tesla as the company prepares to unveil its quarterly financials on Wednesday, potentially mirroring the outcomes of the same quarter in 2023.