It is an essential element of the green energy transition and just a few years ago Australia was in the front seat of a lithium boom, but a new wave of supplies has put their competitive edge under pressure.

Consumers are increasingly opting to drive EVs, and governments continue to invest in solar and wind projects, yet lithium miners have spent the last year watching the price of their ore sinking.

Last week, the financial pain inflicted by a year of declining lithium prices was revealed as Australia’s major producers opened their balance sheets up for investors.

Clint Jasper has the details on how this played out on The Business.

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We’re continuing with this morning’s theme on GDP.

Ahead of today’s data release, economist Saul Eslake said population growth, in particular the post-pandemic surge in net migration, will likely have spared us a worse set of GDP figures.

“It’s simple arithmetic. If migration had been zero we would have had a six-quarter-long recession using the common definition.”

Mr Eslake said “remarkably strong” business investment and spending by governments had also contributed to economic growth, but that by contrast the situation for households was “tough”.

“Real [inflation-adjusted] household disposable income has fallen more in the last 12 months than at any time since 1983, and in per capita terms since 1959,” he said.

You can read more of the story below.

Independent economist Nicki Hutley has provided some analysis on what to expect from the GDP figures out later this morning.

She told News Breakfast the report is expected to show weak growth in the June quarter, around 0.3%.

“That’s really very weak growth,” she said.

While she warned these numbers are “backwards looking”, she said they “set the scene for where we’re coming from and that is a very weak economy”.

“The big argument is where we’re going to now and there is a lot of debate about this at the moment,” she said.

Ms Hutley acknowledged households are doing it very tough and the world is currently very uncertain.

“There’s a lot of balanced risks here about where the economy goes,” she said.

“My sense is we’re probably close to the bottom of this cycle but things still don’t look that rosy for quite a while to come.”

Her conclusion? It was still too early to use the R-word (recession). You can watch her full interview below:

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The national accounts have dominated discussions this week. And we’ll have you covered when the data comes out later this morning.

Ahead of the release, a Reuters poll suggests the consensus view is that it will likely be another quarter of subdued GDP growth of 0.3%.

Up until yesterday, UBS had been forecasting the same number for the June quarter.

But it sent out a note downgrading that to 0.2% after Tuesday’s balance of payments data was released.

“The Current Account Balance (CAB) in Q2-24 deteriorated sharply to a deficit of -$10.7bn, significantly worse than expected again,” they wrote.

ANZ is forecasting 0.1%, while Westpac is estimating 0.3%.

If you’re looking for a recap on what happened, Alan Kohler has you covered.

You can watch his summary below:

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Commsec economist and market analyst Tom Piotrowski has described the situation overnight as the “opposite of a royal flush in poker”.

“We’ve seen quite the busy day for northern hemisphere markets, particularly when sell-offs were concerned,” he told News Radio.

As flagged earlier, there are a couple of things going on in the US that sparked investor anxiety, including the release of some disappointing manufacturing data and concerns about economic growth.

But it was the tech-heavy Nasdaq that led the losses on Wall Street, with a decline of more than 3%.

“When we see these declines, its tech stocks that are right in the centre of that retreat,” Mr Piotrowski said.

Nvidia was one of the worst performers after last week’s quarterly forecast failed to meet expectations.

Investors are becoming more cautious about emerging AI technology, which has fueled much of this year’s stock market gains.

As for what this means for the rest of the week, Mr Piotrowski said in the coming days, we will see a range of economic readings, particularly where the US is concerned.

The week ends with the official government employment figures and if those numbers hold up well, he said that will sustain markets.

Remember when markets briefly took a dive last month and everyone was suddenly becoming an expert on the yen carry trade?

Well, those memories came flooding back overnight as Wall Street stocks experienced their biggest hit since early August.

Investors took some sharp defensive moves after the market had a day off on Monday.

Just as it was during last month’s sell-off, the nervousness was prompted by American economic data. But unlike then, when there was anxiety around interest rates and inflation, investors are now preoccupied with the pathway for economic growth.

The catalyst was a weaker-than-expected manufacturing report, which showed conditions had improved in the month, though not as much as investors had hoped for.

But it didn’t fully explain the market volatility overnight.

“The key news was a manufacturing ISM that remained sluggish, but the direction of travel was clear ahead of that data, and it is hard to pin the blame for moves of this size on the ISM data alone,” NAB wrote in an analyst note.

Investors are now waiting anxiously for the monthly US jobs report, which will be released later in the week.

It’s expected to offer more clues on the direction of the economy and the likelihood of an interest rate cut.

The sell-off overnight also extended to commodities, with oil prices settling at their lowest level in nearly nine months.

It came amid expectations of an imminent deal to resolve a dispute, which has halted Libyan production and exports, according to Reuters.

Tech stocks also tumbled, led by AI heavyweight Nvidia’s shares shedding 9.5%.

It was the deepest ever single-day decline in market value for a US company. We’ll have more on that in a sec.

Good morning and welcome to the ABC’s finance and business blog.

Overnight in the US, investors returned from their holidays, as markets opened for the first time this week after closing for the Labor Day holiday on Monday.

But they don’t appear to have brought the summer vibes back home with them.

Instead, we saw a sell-off in US markets as uncertainty returned to Wall Street.

All three major indices were down, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq experiencing the greatest drop at 3.2%.

The S&P 500 declined 2.1%, while the Dow shed 1.5%.

Commodity prices didn’t fare any better, with brent crude shedding nearly 5% and iron ore down more than 3%.

We’ll explain what prompted the market volatility in a moment.

But all of that means we’re on track for the ASX to tumble later this morning, with futures currently pointing to a decent decline of about 1%.

Later this morning, we’ll also have some hotly anticipated GDP figures, which are due out at 11:30am.

Stick with us as we take you through all the updates from overnight and throughout the day.

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