Once again, the lack of a meaningful tech sector on the Australian share market looks set to insulate us from a major sell-off (just as it meant we missed out on the best of the tech boom run-up).
The ASX SPI 200 futures are up 0.4% to 7,621 points.
That’s a partial rebound from Friday’s fall, which was triggered by the initial reports of Israel’s retaliatory strike for Iran’s retaliatory strike, now that it appears Israel took a very limited response.
However, while the blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.6% on Friday, a substantial dive for some big names in the tech sector dragged the S&P 500 down 0.9% and saw a much bigger slump on the Nasdaq.
“Friday’s 2% NASDAQ fall was led by a 10% fall in Nvidia’s share price — albeit they don’t report until late May — and 4% for Meta who, together with Tesla, Alphabet and Microsoft, report this week, also IBM, Intel, et al),” writes NAB’s head of FX strategy Ray Attrill.
“This has put a S&P500 re-weighted Mag[nificent]-7 index more than 8% off its 11 April highs.
“Tesla was off another 2% Friday to be 44% down from its start of year highs, to be danger of losing its membership of the Mag-7 club, in which respect news Sunday that Tesla is cutting the price of its revamped Model 3 by 5.7% may or may not please investors today.
“On the week, the NASDAQ is down 5.5%, losses only exceeded by the Nikkei (-6.2%) with the S&P500 off 3% on the week and the Shanghai 300 the only major index to have an ‘up’ week (1.9%).”
The volatility index is also slightly elevated, which isn’t surprising given both the continuing tensions in the Middle East and the diminishing prospects of rate cuts soon.
In times of volatility, it’s best to be caffeinated (and to follow the ABC News markets blog).
