Record highs In New York have barely registered in Australia, where the sharemarket is set to open little changed on Wednesday ahead of the release of inflation data.
Futures trading has pointed to the ASX 200 index beginning just three points below the previous close at 8,688 points at 10:00 am AEST (12:00 am GMT).
The market is awaiting the publication of consumer price index data for April from the Australian Bureau of Statistics at 11:30 am AEST for signs of the direction of inflation and its impact on monetary policy at a time of rising interest rates.
Economists expect trimmed-mean, or underlying, inflation to have risen to 3.4% or 3.5% from 3.3% in March, increasing pressure on the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to keep lifting interest rates, although the headline rate is forecast to have eased to potentially as low as 4.3% from 4.6%.
“What investors will be looking for is how much, if any, of the impact of Middle East war is flowing through to consumers here,” said CommSec Head of Media and Markets Gillian Bowen.
ASX investors appeared to have overlooked two of the three main United States stock indexes reaching new highs amid continued optimism about artificial intelligence (AI) and despite worries about the conflict between the United States and Iran.
Although the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.2%, the S&P 500 added 0.6%, and the Nasdaq Composite leapt 1.2% on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) as the market was buoyed by demand for technology stocks linked to the AI boom.
"For those of us that have been working that long, the tech rallies we've been seeing this year are reminiscent of the boom at the end of the 1990s," Northlight Asset Management chief investment officer Chris Zaccarelli was quoted as saying in a Reuters article.
"It's also possible that some of the lessons that were learned after the tech bubble burst over 25 years ago will prevent the same thing from happening again."
Action on the ASX includes Amcor (ASX: AMC) trading ex a 91 cents per share dividend and Nufarm (ASX: NUF) reporting its half-year results.
The ASX 200 had fallen 0.4% to 8,657.8 points on Tuesday, with eight of the benchmark’s 11 sectors ending lower.
On the bond markets, yields on Australian Government paper continued to fall, with two-year rates down by 0.54% to 4.598% and 10-year rates 0.26% off at 4.914% at the time of writing.
