Gold miners, CBA drive market to record high; ASX makes TPG bungle

Welcome to your five-minute recap of the trading day.

The numbers

The S&P/ASX 200 hit a record intraday peak of 8848.8 points before settling at its highest-ever close of 8843.7, up 73.3 points, or 0.8 per cent for the day. Ten of the 11 sectors finished in the green, with utilities lower.

The broader All Ordinaries rose 78.3 points, or 0.9 per cent, also to a record-high close of 9107.1, after hitting a peak of 9115.4 during the session.

The Australian dollar is higher against most major currencies, buying US64.88¢, up from US64.60¢ on Tuesday at 5pm.

The lifters

Energy and materials stocks led the gains, with gold miners Northern Star (up 5 per cent), Newmont (up 2.2 per cent) and Evolution Mining (up 1.9 per cent) jumping as the price of the haven asset rose overnight. Fortescue (up 1.3 per cent), Rio Tinto (up 1 per cent) and BHP (up 0.3 per cent) were all ahead. Woodside and Santos each added 1.3 per cent, Yancoal jumped 2.5 per cent and Ampol was 0.3 per cent higher.

Financial stocks were stronger. Australia’s most valuable company and the world’s most expensive bank stock CBA led the big four, up 1 per cent to $174. Westpac gained 0.7 per cent while ANZ gained 0.1 per cent and NAB added 0.5 per cent.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp added 7.2 per cent after the media giant reported a growth in revenue in its full-year earnings, released after the closing bell on Wall Street. Its ASX-listed digital real estate business, REA Group, jumped 7 per cent as it reported record figures, after higher listing prices helped drive a 23 per cent lift in net profit after tax.

The laggards

The biggest loser was TPG Telecom, down 5.1 per cent, after a bungle from the market operator ASX Limited, which incorrectly processed an announcement from Infomedia, saying it had been bought by a private equity firm, TPG Capital Asia.

The telco TPG, a different company to the private equity firm, was wrongly cross-referenced in the announcement, sparking a fall in TPG shares before trading was paused. ASX cancelled all trades made in TPG shares between the error and when trading was paused.

“This issue arose from an inadvertent human error and I recognise that it has caused disruption for TPG Telecom and its investors,” said ASX group executive for markets and listings, Darren Yip.

“This mistake shouldn’t have happened and we are reviewing our internal processes to understand if there are additional safeguards or procedures we could implement to reduce the risk of a similar reoccurrence.”

The lowdown

Australia’s sharemarket surged to record highs as miners helped the bourse shrug off a weak Wall Street session to top 8800 points for the first time. Inflows into global miners and continued banking sector strength wiped investor worries about global growth.

Helping the local bourse buck an overnight down-tick on Wall Street was Australia’s relative lack of volatility-prone tech companies and an ongoing influx of funds into global miners, Moomoo market strategist Michael McCarthy said.

“That came initially at the expense of the banks, but overall now it appears to be related to a particular desire and a reweighting back into global miners because of an upward revision of the outlook for commodities.”

Gold prices continued to push higher, tracking with a lift in risk-off sentiment in US markets overnight, supporting Australian gold miners.

Australia’s energy sector strengthened as oil ticked higher after a four-day drop as investors waited to see whether US President Donald Trump would impose secondary tariffs on buyers of Russian energy in a bid to increase pressure on Moscow.

Interest rate-sensitive segments such as financials, real estate and IT stocks surged on expectations of cheaper incoming borrowing costs in Australia and the United States.

Property investment trusts were up 0.9 per cent and building on Tuesday’s gains, indicating continued confidence in a Reserve Bank interest rate cut at the central bank’s meeting next Tuesday, McCarthy said.

Rate markets have priced in a 25 basis point cut to the cash interest rate, but similar expectations fell flat in July after the central bank chose to err on the side of caution and hold steady at 3.85 per cent.

Overnight, the S&P 500 fell 0.5 per cent, coming off a whipsaw stretch where it went from its worst day since May to its best since May.

A weaker-than-expected report on activity for US businesses in service industries such as transportation and retail added to worries that US President Donald Trump’s tariffs may be hurting the economy. But increased hopes for coming cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve, along with a stream of stronger-than-expected profit reports from US companies, helped to keep the losses in check. The S&P 500 remains within 1.4 per cent of its record.

All kinds of companies have been telling investors how much they expect tariffs to shave off their earnings this year, and trade policy was one of the most common topics US services businesses talked about in the latest monthly survey compiled by the Institute for Supply Management about their activity.

“Tariffs are causing additional costs as we continue to purchase equipment and supplies,” one company in the healthcare and social assistance business said, for example. “Though we need to continue with these purchases, the cost is significant enough that we are postponing other projects to accommodate these cost changes.”

Expectations have built sharply for a rate cut at the September Federal Reserve meeting since a report on the US job market on Friday came in much weaker than economists expected. Lower interest rates would make stocks look less expensive, while giving the overall economy a boost. The potential downside is that they could push inflation higher.

With AAP, AP

The Market Recap newsletter is a wrap of the day’s trading. Get it each weekday afternoon.