ASX opens higher as ResMed, Nine Entertainment rally; gold miners slide
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More news: Australian shares opened higher, despite losses on Wall Street overnight, as healthcare stocks led broad gains across the market.
The benchmark ASX 200 index was up 19.5 points, or 0.22%, to 8,947 at 10:30am AEDT. Nine of the 11 sectoral indices were in positive territory.
Healthcare (+1.7%) was the best performing segment as biotech giant CSL climbed 2.5%. Sleep apnea device maker ResMed jumped 4.2% after reporting an 11% rise in second-quarter revenue.
Elsewhere, Nine Entertainment (+3.2%) was among the top performers on the ASX 200 after announcing the $850 million acquisition of digital out-of-home advertising company QMS.
Casino operator Star Casino (+4.7%) also rallied after swinging to a quarterly EBITDA profit.
Gold miners sold off after spot prices lowered overnight. Emerald Resources and Perseus Mining were both down more than 5%.
Australian shares to open lower as AI spending stirs fears on Wall St
The news: Australian shares are set to slide at the open after US stocks retreated to one-week lows, as the first wave of megacap earnings sparked fresh concerns over AI-related spending.
The numbers: Updated at 7:40am AEDT:
- ASX futures: down 17 points to 8,916
- Wall Street: Dow Jones down 0.16%, S&P 500 down 0.54% and the Nasdaq down 1.30%.
- Europe: CAC 40 up 0.06%, DAX down 2.07% and FTSE 100 up 0.17%.
- Spot gold: down 2.00% to USD5,312 per ounce.
- Oil prices: Brent up 3.75% to USD70.96/bbl and US WTI up 3.90% to USD65.67/bbl.
- AUD: down 0.04% at 70.36 US cents.
- Bitcoin: down 5.93% to USD83,824.
The context: Microsoft plunged more than 10% after cloud revenue disappointed and spending on its OpenAI alliance surged. Tesla reversed initial gains to be 3.3% lower, after it outlined record capital expenditure plans. Other tech stocks including SAP (-16.1%), ServiceNow (-11.4%), Salesforce (-6.5%) and Adobe (-3.0%) also saw sharp selloffs.
Meanwhile Meta soared 10.4% after delivering a higher-than-expected sales outlook and expanded capex budget. IBM rose 4.7% after beating fourth-quarter estimates.
Elsewhere, US President Donald Trump said he'll announce his choice to replace Jerome Powell as the chair of the Federal Reserve "next week".
The source: Reuters
