ASX falls as banks drop; MinRes sinks, James Hardie rallies

The Australian sharemarket fell on Wednesday as the “Trump trade” that’s powered global equities for much of the last week took a breather and interest rate concerns returned to the fore.

The S&P/ASX 200 Index closed down 62 points, or 0.8 per cent, to 8193.4 points after the S&P 500 snapped its biggest five-day run in a year, falling 0.3 per cent overnight.

On the ASX, financials were the worst hit, tumbling 1.1 per cent as money markets again pushed out the timing of the Reserve Bank’s first interest rate cut to September next year – fearing that the policy agenda of US President-elect Donald Trump would prolong global inflation.

National Australia Bank dropped 2.2 per cent to $38.30 and ANZ shed 4 per cent to $31.27 in ex-dividend trading. The sector fell as much as 2 per cent but recovered some losses after the release of Australian wage price index data, which showed annual wages growth had slipped to 3.5 per cent in the September quarter. That’s the first time the rate had fallen below 4 per cent since the June quarter of last year.

Robert Carnell, head of Asia Pacific research at ING, said the annual figure had fallen below the RBA forecasts. “This is a necessary but not sufficient condition to enable the [RBA] to start thinking about rate cuts and to cross out the risk of an upside-tail risk to rates,” he said. “That said, the argument for a near-term cut remains very thin, and we don’t expect any easing from the RBA until 1Q25 at the earliest.”

Stocks in focus

Family monitoring app Life360 sank 7.4 per cent to $22.39 after reporting softer-than-expected FY24 earnings in its latest quarterly report.

Mineral Resources dropped 7.2 per cent to $35.57 on news that operations at the Bald Hill site in Western Australia would be put on hold from this week until spodumene prices improve. That means about 300 staff would be redeployed or offered redundancy.

Light & Wonder lost 4.6 per cent to $151.67 after the company reported a 15 per cent rise in gaming revenue in the September quarter, short of analysts’ expectations.

Competitor Aristocrat Leisure reported a 17 per cent increase in net profit to $1.45 billion in FY24, citing “exceptional” operations in North America. The company also forecast higher full-year net profit. The shares rose 2.6 per cent to $66.62.

Building materials giant James Hardie jumped 6.2 per cent to $53.35 after reaffirming the lower end of its volume guidance despite a “challenging demand environment”.

Selfwealth soared 70.8 per cent to 20.5¢ after receiving a buyout offer from Bell Financial for 22¢ per share. Bell Financial shares rose 2.8 per cent higher to $1.30.