Morning Bell 30 October

The US overnight saw an overall mixed trading session - the Dow Jones retreated 0.16% and the S&P500 0.11% from their record highs on comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell suggested that there may not be further interest rate cuts this year. Meanwhile, the tech heavy Nasdaq bucked the trend and advanced 0.55%. The jump was primarily driven by Nvidia, which added a further 3% overnight and became the first company in history to hit the 5 trillion US dollar market cap milestone.

All eyes are now on the post close, where investors will react to the biggest earnings day for the megacap tech stocks, with Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet results all due.

Europe overnight also saw a mixed session – the Stoxx600 traded nearly flat, The UK’s FTSE gained 0.61%, while Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC retreated 0.64% and 0.19% respectively.

Locally yesterday, the ASX200 slid almost 1% in its worst trading day since September as worse than inflation results dashed investors hopes for another interest rate cut this year. The major banks were among the hardest hit, with CBA (ASX:CBA), NAB (ASX:NAB) and Westpac (ASX:WBC) falling 2.1 2.6 and 3.1% respectively. The real estate sector, which is also sensitive to interest rates declined as well – Stockland (ASX:SGP) and Mirvac (ASX:MGR) closed down 3.9% and 2.1%.

Of the key sectors, healthcare performed the worst of all largely weighed down by CSL (ASX:CSL), which slid a further 4% to its lowest price since 2018 following a downgrade on its projected earnings. On the winning side, Uranium stocks performed very well after the US Government, Brookfield and Cameco announced a transformational partnership, with at least 80 billion USD committed to building new nuclear power reactors. The highlight of the day was Boss Energy (ASX:BOE) which jumped nearly 20%, while the broader Uranium ETF ticker code ATOM was up 8.7%.

What to watch today:

• Looking ahead to today’s trading session, the SPI futures indicate the ASX200 will open down a further 0.36%, building on yesterday’s losses.
• In commodities, Gold is trading down a further 0.58% at 3929 USD/ounce, crude oil is trading 0.35% higher at 60 US dollars and 36 cents per barrel, and Iron ore is trading nearly flat at 105 US dollars and 66 cents per tonne.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter has updated its rating on Woolworths Group (ASX:WOW) from a Hold to a Buy and increased its 12 month target price to $30.70 per share, off the back of promising Q12026 results showing growing revenues across multiple areas of the business.
• And trading central have identified a bearish signal in James Hardie Industries (ASX:JHX), indicating that the stock price may fall from the close of $33.87 to the range of $26.25-$27.50 per share over a period of 21 days, according to the standard principles of technical analysis.