Australian shares set to follow gains on Wall Street

The news: The Australian sharemarket is poised to start higher after major indices on Wall Street bounced back ahead of a busy week of quarterly results.

The numbers: The Dow Jones index ended 0.67% higher, while the broader S&P 500 gained 0.87% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 1.1%. In the local market, ASX 200 futures were up 19 points or 0.25% at 7693 points at 7:00am AEST on Tuesday.

The context: US markets are gearing up for quarterly results from mega cap companies this week, including Tesla, Facebook-owner Meta Platforms, Google’s parent Alphabet, and Microsoft, which could also provide a glimpse of the US economy's health.

In addition to top corporate earnings, markets are also awaiting the release later this week of the March personal consumption expenditure data — the Fed's preferred inflation gauge — to further ascertain the trajectory of monetary policy. Money markets are now pricing in only about 41 basis points (bps) of rate cuts in the US this year, down from about 150 bps seen at the beginning of the year.