Pre-Market Report – Wednesday 25 March

0:00Good morning and welcome to the markets today, pre-market podcast, it's Oliver Matthew and it's Wednesday the 25th of March. This is general advice with its advisor at all, not suited to your own personal financial circumstances. We have had a volatile up and down night, but the net result is down on Wall Street. S&P 500 offers 0.4% down 84 points, and the Nasdaq worst down 0.8% SBI futures, meanwhile, are up 51 points, as resources had a mildly solid night. Iran and the Saspocalypse were the two main stories. I'll start with Iran, there weren't any major updates. Trump continuing to say that the Iranians want a deal, and the Iranians denying all such things. Strikes continuing between Iran, Israel. Trump said that Iran gave the USA present apparently of tremendous value, and the US is set to deploy up to 2,000 troops from the elite 80-second airborne division into the Middle East.

1:03Oil price initially up around 4%, but has since drifted off. I've got on my screen West Texas currently at $87 a barrel, and Brent futures have fallen from $100 down to $96. There was more reinforcement of the narrative that even if the straight-off homers was to open today, that we're going to be seeing prolonged oil disruption. The CEO of Q8's major national oil company has said the oil production in the Middle East would take months to come back online. I did see a headline saying that Iran is now charging up to $2 million in tolls for select shipping traffic, most likely that's coming from China and India, and so while uncertainty remains high, the stock market is not going anywhere. Inflation risk not going away, we've got traders no longer pricing in any rate cuts from the Fed this year. That's compared to two cuts expected before Operation Epic Fury. Bonneilds went back up today, US two years up four basis points, and also worrying to see that Russia has announced it's going to be stopping exports of a money and nitrate, forward at least a month to ensure sufficient supply for its spring planting

2:07season. The Russians control up to about 40% of global trade. That was in Iran. The other major story was the return of the Sasspocalypse, a catalyst coming potentially from Anthropic again, where they released a new agentic AI. We did interestingly see Australian tech four yesterday, said in the podcast yesterday afternoon, that despite Bonneild's dropping on Monday night, our tech sector had a nasty session. Australian traders potentially predicting the move, because we had the software benchmark in the US down 3.5% overnight, sales force stocked down 6.2%, Atlassian down 8.4, and it even took down some of the big tech names. Microsoft off 2.7% and Alphabet down 3.8%. Crowdstrike, which GlobalX recently took out of the Fang ETF, was down 4.9%. They replaced it with a semi-conductor company called Micron Tech. That one also dropped, not quite as much, down 2.2%. But overall, semi-conductors did outperform. The Philadelphia semi-conductor index rose 1.3%. A agentic AI represents a shift from passive-generative AI

3:14to autonomous systems that can, apparently, independently plan and execute multi-step tasks to achieve high-level goals and Claude's new version of co-work. Our read has got increased abilities to control a Mac and can be remotely operated through the Claude phone app. So we're not expecting any life in the Australian tech sector today. But, by futures, as mentioned positive, that's because resources had a solid night. We had Goldstocks, Global Goldstocks at is higher, Lithium having a very good night. Copperstocks mostly higher, and BHP and Rio both up in the U.S. around 1%. Iron ore has been hovering at around $107, and the Gold prices see a small rebound, currently trading at around $4,450 U.S. announced. All right, on the Australian reporting front, we have news that Pepper Money has rejected Challenges Takeover proposal, Amplitude Energy, Isabella Gas Discovery, and a few other announcements from NewsCorp, Rio Tinto, and the KMD. So looking like a quiet day for the corporate front. On the economic front, the main event is

4:17going to be Australian inflation print today at 11.30am. That number is tipped to sit around 3.4%, still hovering above the RBA's target rate. That's for the RBA's trim to mean. While the headline inflation rate is forecast to remain at 3.8% year on year. All right, that's all from me. You have a fantastic Wednesday. Thanks very much for listening, and until next time.