Warehouse and logistics real estate investment trust Goodman Group was down 1 per cent, while shopping centre owners Scentre and Vicinity Group shed 1.1 per cent and 1.5 per cent, respectively. Diversified property group Mirvac lost 2.2 per cent.
Engineering and construction firm Downer EDI slumped 5.6 per cent after the competition watchdog said it started civil cartel proceedings in the Federal Court against Downer’s subsidiary Spotless Facility Services and Ventia Services’ subsidiary Ventia Australia over alleged price fixing relating to estate maintenance and operation services for the Department of Defence. Ventia dived 23 per cent.
Meanwhile, tech stocks largely held on to their gains, following a strong session for their peers on Wall Street. WiseTech Global, the largest tech stock on the local market, was up 0.9 per cent and Xero rose 1.2 per cent. Block, the parent company of Afterpay, has held its place as the morning’s best-performing large cap stock, jumped 4.1 per cent.
Overnight in the US, investors took heart from America’s inflation figures and sent the S&P 500 up 0.8 per cent to break its first two-day losing streak in nearly a month and finish just short of its all-time high. Big Tech stocks drove the Nasdaq composite up 1.8 per cent to top the 20,000 level for the first time. The Dow Jones, meanwhile, lagged the market with a dip of 99 points, or 0.2 per cent.
Stocks got a boost as expectations built that Wednesday’s inflation data will allow the Fed to deliver another cut to interest rates at its meeting next week.
Traders are betting on a nearly 99 per cent probability of that, according to data from CME Group, up from 89 per cent a day before. If they’re correct, it would be a third straight cut by the Fed after it began lowering rates in September from a two-decade high. It’s hoping to support a slowing job market after getting inflation nearly all the way down to its 2 per cent target.
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Lower rates would give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, but they could also provide more fuel for inflation.
“The data have given the Fed the ‘all clear’ for next week, and today’s inflation data keep a January cut in active discussion,” according to Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
Expectations for a series of cuts to rates by the Fed have been one of the main reasons the S&P 500 has set an all-time high 57 times this year, with the latest coming last week.
The biggest boosts for the index on Wednesday came from Nvidia and other Big Tech stocks. Their massive growth has made them Wall Street’s biggest stars for years, though other kinds of stocks have recently been catching up somewhat amid hopes for the broader US economy.
Tesla jumped 5.9 per cent to finish above $US420 at $US424.77. It’s a level that Elon Musk made famous in a 2018 tweet when he said he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $US420 per share.
GE Vernova rallied 5 per cent for one of the biggest gains in the S&P 500. The energy company that spun out of General Electric said it would pay a 25 cent dividend every three months, and it approved a plan to send up to another $US6 billion to its shareholders by buying back its own stock.
On the losing end of Wall Street, Albertsons fell 1.5 per cent after filing a lawsuit against Kroger, saying it didn’t do enough for their proposed $US24.6 billion merger agreement to win regulatory clearance. Albertsons said it’s seeking billions of dollars in damages from Kroger, whose stock rose 1 per cent.
A day earlier, judges in separate cases in Oregon and Washington nixed the supermarket giants’ merger. The grocers contended a combination could have helped them compete with big retailers like Walmart, Costco and Amazon, but critics said it would hurt competition.
After terminating the merger agreement with Kroger, Albertsons said it plans to boost its dividend 25 per cent and increased the size of its program to buy back its own stock.
Macy’s slipped 0.8 per cent after cutting some of its financial forecasts for the full year of 2024, including for how much profit it expects to make off each $US1 of revenue.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.27 per cent from 4.23 per cent late Tuesday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, edged up to 4.15 per cent from 4.14 per cent.
In other international markets, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was an outlier and slipped 0.8 per cent as Chinese leaders convened an annual planning meeting in Beijing that is expected to set economic policies and growth targets for the coming year.
South Korea’s Kospi rose 1 per cent, up for a second straight day as it climbs back following last week’s political turmoil where its president briefly declared martial law.
With AP
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