What to say of this week, when for all intents and purposes, it was a fairly boring Week 39 on the cusp of Q4CY25? Actually, that’s maybe not true for all shareholders. Anyone in Invictus Energy had a lot of things to keep track of; so too for shareholders of Vection Technologies, the newest defence junior to join the ranks of the Down Under Defence Darling Club (DUDDC).
Outside of that, however – and it’s probably worth considering the ASX exploration sector should be considered as a different beast entirely (should we just funnel them all onto an ASXV?) – the XJO continues to struggle with at-home inflation data, and, global macroeconomic headwinds. That’s coupled with the September rule, which generally sees this time of the year a more lacklustre affair when it comes to equity markets.
As I’ve said elsewhere on HotCopper, our current step-back from >9,000pts may or may not mean that at the end of this year we’ll actually get a Santa Rally. As I’ve been yapping about a lot lately, we did not get a Santa Rally last year (if you can remember ancient history,) and for now, it looks like old dogmas have perhaps settled back into a place of reliability.
At any rate, there were some other big news items from this week. First and foremost – even though it’s not on the ASX – Optus had its emergency call failure scandal scalp the stock in Singapore where it’s listed under Singtel. Elsewhere, Myer Group tanked in its latest full-year results, the first we’ve seen after it acquired Apparel Brands from Premier Investments in January.
Without being too much of a hater, it looks like Myer may or may not have bought a lemon from Premier; if not a lemon, then a slower growth acquisition than perhaps first thought.
That’s a conclusion I come to because after acquiring Just Jeans, Jay Jay’s and Dotti from Premier in January of this year, Myer’s sales growth was ultimately flat on FY24 (or at least only half a percent higher.) That, along with a failure to pay out a dividend, spooked investors – putting the mostly bricks and mortar retail heavyweight into the spotlight of concern once more.
Overseas, or globally even, gold prices continue to remain at record levels, and the price of copper has surged above US $10,000 a tonne on some benchmarks after international production concerns. That’s perhaps not surprising: the red metal (or orange metal depending on how you look at it) has long been slated the subject of a megatrend.
Outside of that, it’s unclear when the ASX will pick back up. If there is a Santa rally then we can maybe expect late October to perhaps be the point where shares start to look a little bit happier. Earlier this year (in this very column) I pondered whether the XJO could hit 10,000 points by December – that remains to be seen, and I will admit I’m feeling perhaps a bit more bearish on that call now.
What next week brings remains anybody’s guess, probably the big thing to look out for next month will be Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Donald Trump, but that’s a while off.
Yet, in the meantime, Trump has come out with claims he’ll be putting a 100% tariff on pharmaceutical products – this remains an unclear catalyst for the ASX pharmaceutical sector, but conventional wisdom would suggest it’s net negative. However, on Friday, the sector wasn’t too rattled.