Stan Choe
The Australian sharemarket is set for an unsteady start amid a fresh escalation in tensions in the Middle East while SpaceX soared in its highly anticipated debut on Wall Street.
The S&P 500 added 0.5 per cent to close out its 10th winning week in the last 11. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 353 points, or 0.7 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.3 per cent. ASX futures are pointing to a gain of 39 points, or 0.4 per cent, at the open, but they were set before the latest developments in the Middle East conflict, with Israel launching airstrikes on Lebanon.
Trump berated Israel for the strikes, fearing they could wreck a potential deal with Iran to end months of war.
In a sign of Trump’s anger over the strikes, he told news site Axios that Israeli Prime Minister had “no f—ing judgement” and had put the negotiations at risk, but he expressed confidence a peace deal would be done.
“Why did Bibi have to do a f—ing attack? I was so pissed off,” Trump told Axios, using the nickname for the Israeli leader.
On Friday, Wall Street stocks got a lift from a 3.4 per cent drop for the price of Brent crude oil to $US87.33 per barrel, deepening its loss for the week. Oil prices have come down since Trump on Thursday called off his threat to launch strikes on Iran and said a potential deal with Iran may be imminent.
A deal to end the war could reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow oil tankers to once again deliver crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. Its near closure since the war began has sent the price of Brent up from roughly $US70 per barrel and caused a wave of painful inflation for the world.
Of course, financial markets have rallied in the past on hopes that an end to the war with Iran was near, only to get disappointed each time.
The bigger factor for Wall Street over the last week has actually been artificial-intelligence stocks, and how they have gone from roaring to records to suddenly turning lower. The concern is whether such stocks shot too high, too fast because of AI mania, and their careening moves have sometimes reversed direction by the hour.
SpaceX suggested plenty of demand still exists among investors for AI after its stock leaped 19.2 per cent in its first day of trading. That gave Elon Musk’s rocket company a total value of $US2.1 trillion ($3 trillion), making it bigger than Exxon Mobil, Bank of America and Coca-Cola combined. In addition to building rockets, SpaceX also owns the artificial intelligence company xAI.
AI-related stocks were otherwise mixed following their roller-coaster moves over the last week. Micron Technology’s drop of 1.4 per cent was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500, but CoreWeave jumped 5 per cent after learning it will join the Nasdaq 100 index later this month.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Adobe dropped 6.8 per cent despite reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Its stock has lost nearly 42 per cent so far this year, and it announced its chief financial officer is leaving the company on Monday. Adobe is already looking for a CEO to replace Shantanu Narayen, who announced in March that he is stepping aside after 18 years as Adobe’s leader.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 37.16 points to 7,431.46. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 353.51 to 51,202.26, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 79.18 to 25,888.84.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose to regain some of their sharp slide from the day before, when oil prices dropped following Trump’s announcement. The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.48 per cent from 4.45 per cent late on Thursday.
High yields can slow entire economies and undercut prices for all kinds of investments, including stocks and cryptocurrencies. They hit investments seen as the most expensive in particular, and some critics are calling the AI industry a bubble where investment inflated too far.
Yields got a boost after a report suggested sentiment among US consumers is not as bad as economists feared. The preliminary survey from the University of Michigan said sentiment improved by more than expected. US consumers said they were feeling some relief after gasoline prices eased a bit early in the month.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rallied as they caught up to Thursday’s big gains on Wall Street.
South Korea’s Kospi jumped 4.6 per cent and trimmed its losses from earlier this month taken because of sell-offs for AI-related stocks. The Kospi has nearly doubled since the start of the year.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.8 per cent, and France’s CAC 40 climbed 1.8 per cent for two of the world’s bigger moves.
AP
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