Australian shares set to shrug off sluggish Wall Street trading
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The news: The Australian sharemarket is poised for early gains despite sluggish trading on Wall Street, where investors stayed cautious ahead of key inflation data and corporate earnings.
The numbers: The Dow Jones index closed just 0.03% lower and the broader S&P 500 slipped 0.04% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq edged 0.03% higher. In the local market, ASX 200 futures were up 36 points or 0.46% to 7866 points at 7:00am AEST on Tuesday.
The context: US stocks were broadly unchanged after a choppy session with all three indices held in check by the highest benchmark US Treasury yields since November. It comes in the wake of last week's strong employment report which heightened chances the Federal Reserve could delay implementing its first interest rate cut.
Traders are now awaiting the US Labor Department's March Consumer Price Index (CPI) report later this week which is expected to show a slight cooldown in monthly price growth while year-on-year headline CPI is expected to gain some heat. The first-quarter reporting season also officially kicks off on Friday with numbers from major US banks.
What they said: "Wall Street is adjusting expectations to reflect the fact that the Fed could be slower to lower interest rates and that now the greatest likelihood is for a rate cut to occur at the July FOMC meeting, rather than June," Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist of CFRA Research told Reuters in New York.
The source: Reuters
