Price current around 8:30am AEDT
Live updates on the major ASX indices:
Corporate leaders have launched a business alliance against domestic and family violence.
One Generation aims to ignite business solutions at scale for customers impacted by domestic and family violence, co-founded by not-for-profit Thriving Communities Australia (TCA) with support from social enterprise Flequity Ventures (Flequity).
The program will provide free, practical tools and resources to enable businesses to provide better and safer support for customers experiencing domestic and family violence, foster a culture of respect, one of the key drivers to prevent gendered violence and identify and share evidence of customer support.
TCA CEO Ciara Sterling said essential services were often the first lifeline for customers facing domestic and family violence.
“In that moment, their impact can be truly life changing,” she said.
“But we know many victim-survivors aren’t accessing the support available, largely because they don’t know about it. We want to change that.”
Good morning, I’ll be joining you on the blog for the next few hours. And to kick things off, a bit of corporate news from overnight:
Amcor will buy US packaging giant Berry Global in a near-$13 billion ($US8.4 billion) deal.
Amcor, which is Switzerland-based but also listed on the ASX, said Berry shareholders will receive 7.25 Amcor shares for every Berry share they own when the deal closes.
That will leave Amcor shareholders with around 63 per cent of the combined company.
It produces packaging for everything from food and drinks to healthcare and cosmetics products.
The Reserve Bank is certainly not talking up the prospect of rate cuts ahead of Christmas.
Two weeks ago, at her post-meeting press conference, Michele Bullock hosed down the chance of a move, even at the bank’s February meeting.
I wrote about that in an analysis piece at the time.
Yesterday’s release of the minutes from that early November meeting have done nothing to shift the market view that it’s more likely than not that rates will still be on hold after February’s RBA board meeting.
Currently, according to Refinitiv data, market pricing suggests a 10% chance of rates falling at the December meeting, a less than 40% chance of a February rate cut, better than 50-50 odds of an April cut and the near certainty of a cut by May.
A May rate cut wouldn’t help the Albanese government’s bid for re-election, with the RBA board meeting scheduled for the week after the latest possible election date.
My Parliament House based colleague Tom Crowley has a good write-up of what the RBA minutes revealed about its deliberations at the last board meeting.
Further erosion in housing affordability has seen an increase in demand for units, with apartment price growth now tracking in line with houses, according to the latest ANZ CoreLogic Housing Affordability report.
Affordability metrics deteriorated further in 2024. In the three months to October capital city unit prices rose 0.9% compared to a 0.8% rise in house prices, suggesting home buyers and investors are pivoting towards units as an entry into the property market.
Modelling from the Australian National University (ANU) and CoreLogic suggests Australia’s latest gross median household income level is around $101,000 per year, up from $98,500 in 2023.
This equates to a 2.8% rise over the past year, trailing well behind the 8.5% rise in the median Australian dwelling value, and the 9.6% increase in the median rent over the same period.
In 2024, the median dwelling value to income ratio rose to 8.0, up from a 20-year average of 6.7 and equal to the record highs set in early 2022.
The median income household now needs 10.6 years to save a 20% deposit for the median value dwelling and it now takes more than half of the median household income to service a new home loan (50.6%).
A record high 33% of income is needed for the median income household to service the median rent.
A new report by the Superpower Institute says Australia could reduce global emissions by 10 per cent through exporting green energy-intensive commodities to countries such as China, India, Japan, South Korea and Germany.
The institute says the ‘superpower exports’ could represent around $700 billion in revenue.
Superpower Institute chair, Rod Sims, says Australia wouldn’t be far away from being able to produce the energy-intensive commodities such as green iron or aluminium at large export scale if the government supported innovation and production to same levels that it did for fossil fuel production, for example at around 5% of GDP.
Watch this interview from The Business with Kirsten Aiken.
New data has revealed the spending gap between younger and older Australians is widening, for the second year in a row, and younger people are feeling the pinch of the cost of living crisis most acutely.
The Cost-of-Living Insights report from Commonwealth Bank, which looked at seven million bank accounts, shows while younger people have cut back on spending, over 60s have increased their spending in the last year.
The results show people aged between 18 and 29 cut back the most by 2%. Those aged between 30 and 39 reduced their spending by about 1% while over 70s increased their spending by 7.7%.
The chief executive of the Grattam Institute, Aruna Sathanapally, says older Australians benefited from better access to the housing market, have been able to build up wealth and they receive tax concessions.
But she says these concessions may not be suitable under current circumstances with younger people bearing the brunt of paying for public services and struggling to get ahead.
Watch this interview from The Business with Kirsten Aiken.
Would you work for nothing from now until the end of the year?
For the average Australian woman, they already are, based on a measure of Australia’s gender pay gap.
A new report by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) says the gender pay gap, somewhere between 11.5 and 21.7 per cent, is narrowing much faster than it was previously.
Big pay bumps in some industries, changes that have given more power to workers, and companies being forced to publish their gap have all contributed to the change.
In February, a government agency will publish its second report on the gender pay gap, showing what progress some of Australia’s best-known companies have made in the past year.
Watch this story by Business Reporter Daniel Ziffer.
Europe’s main stock index touched its lowest level in three months on Tuesday, as escalating geopolitical tensions, fuelled by Russia lowering its threshold for a nuclear strike, spurred investors to head to safer havens.
The pan-European STOXX 600 closed 0.4% lower, after falling 1% to its lowest point since August 8 earlier in the session. It logged a third straight day of losses.
Poland, which borders Ukraine, saw its blue-chip index, WIG20, slide more than 3%, falling the most among regional indexes in Europe.
Safe-haven assets such as gold and the US dollar were on the rise.
The Kremlin said the aim of the updated nuclear doctrine was to make potential enemies understand the inevitability of Russian retaliation for an attack.
“Every nation wants to avoid a nuclear war, but the fact that we’ve seen Putin makes steps towards that possibility has led to a risk-off or a safe haven move,” said, Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com.
“It’s clear people are looking for avenues to safely park their money, at least for now, but we’re not there yet in terms of panic or a significant sell off.”
The EuroSTOXX volatility index closed at 19.23, having reached 21.40 earlier in the day – near the highest levels seen this month, signalling growing investor anxiety.
Oil prices dipped, with Brent crude futures down 0.12% to $73.20 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures at $69.08 a barrel, down 0.14%.
The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq edged higher, paring earlier losses as investors assessed Russia’s warning to the United States with a new nuclear doctrine, and awaited quarterly results from AI-heavyweight Nvidia.
Stocks had slid in early trading after Russian President Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks earlier in the day, and Moscow said Ukraine had struck deep inside Russia with US-made long-range missiles.
All three major indexes opened lower and the benchmark index dropped as much as 0.64%, while the Russell 2000 fell to its lowest since the November 5 US presidential election, as investors rushed to safe-haven assets such as government bonds and gold.
However, stocks pared losses after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow will do everything possible to prevent the breakout of a nuclear war.
The CBOE Volatility index had briefly jumped to its highest since the November 5 US election, at 17.93, before slightly easing to 15.98.
“We are in a void of nothing in terms of immediate catalysts, so the markets have to find something to focus on…today’s geopolitical news and saber rattling over nuclear tensions… (are) pulling markets lower,” said Jack Janasiewicz, lead portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions.
The resurgence of geopolitical tensions added jitters during a crucial week for Wall Street, as investors await key cabinet appointments for President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, assess the possible path for interest rate cuts and await quarterly earnings from Nvidia.
Nvidia, which reports third-quarter results on Wednesday, gained 2.7%, boosting the information technology sector that buoyed the benchmark S&P 500.
Most megacap stocks such as Apple and Amazon also trended higher and lifted the Nasdaq.
Price current around 07:24am AEDT
Live updates on the major ASX indices:
Good morning and welcome to Wednesday’s markets live blog, where we’ll bring you the latest price action and news on the ASX and beyond.
A mixed session on Wall Street overnight sets the tone for local market action today.
The Dow Jones index dropped 0.4 per cent, the S&P 500 up 0.3 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite up 0.9 per cent.
ASX futures were down 18 points or 0.3 per cent to 8,390 at 7:00am AEDT.
At the same time, the Australian dollar was up 0.4 per cent to 65.31 US cents.
Brent crude oil was up 0.2 per cent, trading at $US73.44 a barrel.
Spot gold gained 0.7 per cent to $US2,631.51.
Iron ore rose 1.8 per cent to $US101.15 a tonne.
