The Australian sharemarket is expected to rise slightly when trading resumes on Friday as a sell-off in the United States weighs on sentiment.
Trading on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) points to the ASX 200 index opening up 0.12% with the March futures contract of the benchmark last quoted 11 points above the prior settlement at 9,151 points at the time of writing.
This will round out the last week of the ASX reporting season, which Burrell Stockbroking wealth adviser Adam Dight said had been choppy with extreme reactions to results like Woolworths, which surged after posting “unspectacular” numbers.
“It’s remarkable how gullible the market is. It’s crazy and a bit lawless and creates mayhem,” he said.
This may have been due to investors covering short positions, buying from exchange-traded funds or ‘investment pods’.
Dight said the end of the reporting period would allow more time for detailed analysis of the performance of companies rather than ‘artificial and cursory’ assessments.
The lead-in for Australian shares was poor as U.S. indexes finished mixed on Thursday (Friday AEDT).
While the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.03%, the S&P 500 lost 0.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite shed 1.2%.
The markets were undermined by Nvidia’s quarterly results, which failed to allay worries about the disruption likely to be caused by artificial intelligence.
NovaPoint Chief Investment Officer Joseph Sroka said that although Nvidia's results were good and showed substantial growth year they failed to reach the top end of expectations.
"Now the news is over and there's probably a little bit of profit taking and we're seeing money now rotate back to the victims from earlier in the week, the software companies that were portrayed to be the ultimate victims of AI," he was quoted in a Reuters article as saying.
The Australian market had ended at a new record high on Thursday, with the ASX 200 rising 0.51% to 9,175.30 points.
Among the companies scheduled to announce results on the last day of the reporting season are Coles (ASX: COL) and TPG Telecom (ASX: TPG).
In fixed interest markets, Australian Government bond yields dipped, with two-year rates down 0.59% to 4.195% and 10 year rates off by 1.02% at 4.672%.
