End of Day Report – Monday 23 March

0:00Good afternoon and welcome to the Marcus today end of day podcast. My name is Oliver Matthew and it's Monday the 23rd of March. This is general advice if it's advice at all, certainly not suited to your personal financial circumstances. It's been a rough day on the ASX but not quite as bad as expected. After Wall Street's drop on Friday night our futures were down 156 points but we have only finished down 63 points or 0.74%. The Middle East continues to dominate headlines. Trump's 48 hour ultimatum to Iran and tomorrow morning Melbourne time. We're the run at this stage not backing down. Everyone is watching the oil price and after jumping on Friday night it has ended our session near unchanged at $112.40. On our market resources were expected to be the worst performers and that's what we got. Materials sector finished down 2.4% with the gold sector down 7.3%. Gold has been an interesting one. You would expect

1:03in times of crisis that there would be a flight to safety but due to the prospect of higher rates, a stronger US dollar and liquidation of trades to fund margin calls the gold price has actually been under a lot of pressure. In US dollar terms it's fallen from a peak of 5,400 that was when the war in Iran broke out to now sitting at around 4,280 or in other words around 20% of the recent top. A lot of that momentum trading unwinding quickly in the ASX resource sector. We had the likes of Capricorn down 8.4. Evolution down 7.3. GDX that's the gold miners ETF down 7.5%. The gold price in Australian dollar terms fell today 6.1%. That's from Friday's close until today's close and northern star down 7%. Very nicely moves there and it wasn't much better in other resources. Copper stocks all down as GDP growth estimates get downgraded. That's on the back of inflation risk from the higher oil price. Sandfire was off 5.6% today. Lithium stocks

2:08bit of a mixed bag. We had Wildcat down 4.3. INR was down 9% but Liontown flat and PLS was up 0.7%. There's been rally from an opening low there. Not much joy in Uranium stocks. Lotus down 12% Paladin down 6% Boss Energy also down 6% and Rare Earths also under pressure. One of the surprising safe havens was actually iron ore stocks. Iron ore on the Singapore exchange has been holding steady at $108 and because of that we actually saw a rally in FMG and it finishing up 0.5%. While BHP was only down 0.8 and RIO down 1.7. BHP and RIO both having copper exposure of course along with a few other metals while FMG is a pure play iron ore stock. Outside of resources we had REITs also doing poorly. They are getting hammered by the rise in bond yields as rate expectations go up. The tech sector also under pressure growth stocks do not lack higher rates. One of the surprise move was the discretionary sector. That one is supposed to also be rate sensitive but

3:08has been battered so there could be a bit of solar exhaustion creeping in there. We had the likes of JB Hi-Fi, Light and Wanda and Aristocrat Leisure all doing well up at least 2% if not more. Financials were almost all down. That's safe for the insurers. Insurers do like higher rates depending on what time period you're looking at but the big banks were all down. Again off-loads like the rest of the market. We had the CBA down 0.8%. NAB down 1.8. Westback down 0.9 and ANZ also down 0.9. Macquarie down graded the sector today. The analysts they're highlighting that rising energy prices often precede for sessions and for the banks high interest rates spell high risk to credit growth and bad debts. They slightly lower their earnings forecast but hardly earth shattering. The banks are expensive and that means that sentiment is more important. It makes it vulnerable. I covered that in the income portfolio today if you want to have a look. Moving on to the green side of the market and there was a turnaround. Energy sector was actually lower on the open but rally throughout the day. Oil stocks as you can expect kept gaining. We had

4:11Santos up 0.9% and Woodside up 2.2. Refiners also doing well. Ampole and VA both up around 1% and Colt stocks also staged a nice turnaround. Good to see. We had White Haven up 1% YAL up 3.8 and the only one that missed out was Northern No Sorry. New Hope down 0.5%. And then finally moving on to the other green sectors we heard defensives as usual doing very well. You had utility sector up and healthcare telecoms and staples all were either flat or small gains. A few announcements today. We covered in ASX today. If you hold any of these stocks make sure to take a look. There was MediBank, Macquarie, Retail Food Group, Seven Group Holdings, Judo and Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara was interesting. They put out their own announcements saying that they maintain more than three months of diesel supply at one of their minds. We are going to be hearing a lot more about the concerns of miners and the diesel prices and how large their suppliers. All right that'll do it for me. I hope you have a fantastic afternoon. Down and Nasdaq futures are

5:12currently lower heading into a big eventful night. Nasdaq futures down 0.6%. Asian stocks all lower. China off 2.5. Japan down 3.7. They were closed on Friday so doing a bit of catch up and the ultra volatile Korean Cosby Index that one's down 6.2% in one day. All right you'll have Henry for the pre-market podcast most likely tomorrow. You stay safe out there. Thanks very much for listening and until next time.