A fifth successive day of losses is facing investors in Australian shares, with the market likely to begin lower on Thursday after a mixed night on Wall Street, where two of the benchmarks touched new peaks.
The guide from trading in the June contract of the ASX 200 index is that prices will start 0.25% down on average at 10:00 am AEST (12:00 am GMT Thursday), extending a drop worsened by a poor performance by Commonwealth Bank of Australia the previous day.
Morgans Financial private client adviser Lachlan Walsh said the sharp sell-offs in CBA and CSL (ASX: CSL) had had a significant impact on the index, but copper producers had provided bright lights to investors due to their exposure to rising copper prices.
He nominated BHP (ASX: BHP), Sandfire Resources (ASX: SFR), Capstone Copper (ASX: CSC) as the stocks benefitting, also noting Rio Rinto (ASX: ASX) was tilting toward copper as it diversified away from iron ore.
“It's been a bit of really tough market here in Australia, but (we're) probably not doing as badly as what people think in relative (terms),” Walsh said.
The ASX received positive signals from New York, where the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite indexes closed at new highs as artificial intelligence-related tech shares rallied.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.1%, but the S&P 500 added 0.6% and the Nasdaq jumped 1.2%.
This was after investors overlooked higher-than-forecast inflation numbers and lowered their hopes that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates in the near future.
"In the face of continued hot inflation data, technology remains resilient," Carson Group chief market strategist Ryan Detrick was quoted in a Reuters article as saying.
The Australian market closed lower for a fourth straight session with the ASX 200 dipping 0.5% to 8,630.4 points on Wednesday despite 10 of the 11 sectors ending up.
Corporate news scheduled today includes full-year results from Xero (ASX: XRO) and half-year results from GrainCorp (ASX: GNC).
In Australian fixed interest markets, government bond yields dropped, with two-year rates down 0.76% to 4.727% and 10-year rates off by 0.36% to 5.048% at the time of writing.
