The laggards

The big four banks all closed less than 1 per cent lower. Westpac closed 0.7 per cent weaker following the announcement its chief executive Peter King would retire after nearly five years at the helm.

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Large-cap Steadfast Group froze trading just before midday after plummeting 6 per cent at the open. The halt followed reports from the ABC that the insurance broker had withheld information from clients on cheaper insurance alternatives from rival companies.

In retail, Premier Investments fell nearly 3.9 per cent after announcing the firing of John Cheston, managing director of popular stationery brand Smiggle.

“The Just Group board considers that Mr John Cheston has engaged in serious misconduct and a serious breach of his employment terms and on that basis his employment has been terminated today,” the company said in a statement on Monday morning.

Cheston is due to start as chief executive at youth accessories brand Lovisa in the middle of next year. Its share price slid 4.5 per cent at the close.

In a separate statement, Premier Investments posted soft results for the 2024 financial year, and other stocks reflected the challenging consumer discretionary market. JB Hi-Fi (down 1.7 per cent), Wesfarmers (down 0.8 per cent) and Harvey Norman (down 1.1 per cent) all edged down.

Domino’s Pizza shares fell 3.1 per cent as the fast-food chain prepared to defend accusations from a class action lawsuit of misleading and deceptive conduct, and of failing to fully disclose poor international performance to investors.

Evolution Mining rounded out the biggest large-cap losers, dropping 3 per cent.

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The lowdown

BetaShares chief economist David Bassanese said the ASX tracked Wall Street’s Friday dive but that it had managed to shrug off the worst lows because of the local bourse’s lesser reliance on tech stocks.

“It’s largely a flow through from the weakness of Wall Street on Friday. We’re getting these sporadic US recession concerns, and so our market’s been caught up in that,” Bassanese said.

“The Friday numbers were soft in one sense, and employment was weaker than expected, but the unemployment rate actually ticked down to 4.2 from 4.3 so it wasn’t weak enough to suggest that the Fed would cut rates by 50 points next week.

“The markets seem disappointed by that mixed report. On the one hand, the markets would like to see the Fed cutting by 50 points next week, but on the other hand, they don’t want it to be a reaction to very weak economic data.”

“The other element of this is that it’s not just US recession concerns, it’s a reappraisal of the valuations of US tech companies, particularly Nvidia, which less affects Australia because technology is a smaller share of our market. So that’s helping in stemming the slide in Australia, versus what we’ve been seeing in the US of late.” he added.

On Wall Street on Friday, the S&P 500 and the Dow had their biggest weekly drop since March 2023. The Nasdaq registered its biggest weekly drop since January 2022.

Losses in megacap “Magnificent Seven” stocks dragged the bourse, including Tesla (down 8.4 per cent), Nvidia (down 4 per cent), Google owner Alphabet (down 4 per cent) and Meta (down 3.2 per cent).

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Quote of the day

“We had one customer a couple of months ago earn $300 [in] a day from their Nissan Leaf. I’m yet to hear of anyone else earning more than that from their car in a single day,” co-chief executive of Amber Electric, Chris Thompson, said of the potential for electric vehicle batteries to help power the electricity grid.

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The reforms will force the companies to submit to an expanded federal authority that can compel them to refund customers who lose money, amid growing anger at scams that cost households at least $2.7 billion a year, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

With Reuters

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