S&P/ASX 200 Index fell 12.4 points, or 0.1 per cent, to 8622.2 at the closing bell as nine of the 11 sectors finished in the red.
The All Ordinaries fell by a similar amount.
Ainsworth Game Technology last traded at around $1. The poker machine maker said on Monday that it expected to post $21.5 million in underlying pre-tax profit for 2025, down from $23.2 million a year earlier, after a sharp second-half slowdown led by its North American business.\
National Storage REIT climbed 2.2 per cent to $2.79 as it agreed to a $4 billion takeover by a Brookfield-GIC consortium that will see investors receive $2.86 cash per stapled security.
DigiCo Infrastructure REIT dipped 1.1 per cent to $2.50 after it named Michael Juniper as its new chief executive, effective immediately. He will also serve as managing director of digital infrastructure at HMC Capital.
TechnologyOne edged up 0.4 per cent to $28.85 after the company backed confidence in chief financial officer Cale Bennett to shareholders, who was employed by scandal-ridden Corporate Travel Management between 2019 and 2023, including as global CFO.
Bond investors are not so sure about the market’s dramatic pivot in interest rate expectations from rate cuts to rate hikes within just a few days.
US
Investors rushed to snap up shares of artificial-intelligence chip maker Moore Threads, betting that Beijing’s push to end reliance on foreign technology could help create a homegrown Nvidia. ($WSJ)
Paramount Skydance rallies as it bids for Warner Brothers, against Netflix
Confluent jumps after report that IBM nears $11 billion buyout deal
Oppenheimer sets Street-high 8,100 S&P 500 target for 2026
Economy
Economists predict Reserve Bank of Australia governor Michele Bullock will take a more hardline and inflation-wary approach to interest rates, dashing hopes of Christmas relief for mortgage payers ahead of the bank’s final meeting of the year. ($AFR)
China’s year-to-date trade surplus in goods has surpassed $1tn for the first time, as exports boom despite US President Donald Trump’s tariff war. ($FT)
Business
Deutsche Bank is seeking to increase the pay of its supervisory board chair by more than 40 per cent, despite Alexander Wynaendts already being the highest-paid chair of Germany’s blue-chip Dax companies. ($FT)
Anglo American has abandoned plans to award its top executives multimillion-pound bonuses if its planned $50bn merger with Teck Resources goes through, after shareholders objected to the proposal. ($FT)
Currencies
The Australian dollar is trading Monday afternoon at 0.6645 and at this point it looks like closing in on its 11th daily gain in 12, a feat not achieved for quite a few years. A confident AUD dollar looks forward to this Tuesday’s RBA meeting which is expected to strike a slightly more hawkish tone, a Fed rate cut on Wednesday night and local jobs data on Thursday.\
AUD/USD posted a 1.5% gain last week, putting it atop the G20 leadership boards. The pair cleared a number of resistance points in the 0.6620-30 area late last week that could have been expected to at least temporarily thwart it. A range of AUD-crosses are also hitting new highs.
AUD/EUR finally broke above its painfully narrow 0.55-0.57 range late last week hitting 6-month highs just above 0.57.
AUD/JPY pushed through onto the 103.0 handle at 17-month highs. These gains come despite a relatively hawkish BoJ Gov. Ueda, convincing markets that a Dec. BoJ rate hike is very likely.
AUD/NZD is holding above 1.14 and was modestly higher last week. It trades at 1.1485 Monday afternoon. November’s hawkish RBNZ cut may have been the last in their cycle giving a solid boost to the Kiwi, but an even larger reappraisal of RBA expectations is playing out this side of the Tasman, keeping the cross relatively elevated.
Sterling falls 0.1% to $1.3328 after hitting a six-week high of $1.3385 on Thursday, LSEG data show.
The euro rises 0.2% to 0.8745 pounds after reaching a five-week low of 0.8719 on Thursday.
Politics
Sir Keir Starmer is set to host Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his French and German counterparts as European powers seek to rally support for Kyiv at a time of growing US pressure to agree a peace deal with Russia. ($FT)
Donald Trump said Netflix’s “very big market share” in streaming video could pose a problem as it seeks regulatory approval for its blockbuster $83bn deal to acquire Warner Bros. ($FT)
Donald Trump hits the road next week to sell his economic agenda as Americans are increasingly blaming him for what the data shows is a worsening affordability crisis. ($FT)
The Federal Reserve is set to cut interest rates next week despite deep divisions among its officials on the direction of the US economy, according to leading academic economists. ($FT)
Hungary’s budget gap continued to widen in November after Fitch Ratings cut the outlook on Hungary’s second-lowest investment grade on Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s pre-election spending. ($BBG)
Regulators in Washington have rolled back rules put in place after the 2008 financial crisis that limited how much risk banks can take in corporate lending and fueled the boom in the multitrillion-dollar private credit industry. ($WSJ)
Deal Flow
L’Oréal will double its stake in dermatology company Galderma as the world’s biggest beauty group increases its interest in the aesthetic injectables specialist to 20 per cent. ($FT)
Airwallex plots Silicon Valley expansion after securing $8bn valuation. ($FT)
Aktor Group’s joint-venture with Greece’s state gas supplier Depa Commercial SA is looking to secure additional supplies of liquefied natural gas from the US. ($BBG)
Opinion
The recent equity rally could stall after the Federal Reserve’s expected rate cut as investors move to take profits, according to strategists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. ($BBG)
