Australian shares are expected to rise when the market opens on Wednesday despite a mostly lower Wall Street close.
At the time of writing the S&P/ASX 200 share price index (SPI) September contract was trading 18 points (0.21%) above the previous settlement at 8,558 points.
Futures traders on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) appeared to be following the example set by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which finished higher in chopped deals on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), and not the Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 indices.
The Nasdaq and S&P lost ground due to weakness in large technology stocks as investors rotated funds into healthcare shares.
"We got to very overbought levels on tech and Nasdaq over the past weeks," Mizuho Americas Managing Director of Equities Farz Azarm was quoted in a Reuters article as saying.
"Today you are seeing a massive unwind of this movement.”
A strong start provides the first opportunity for more broadly-based capital gains in the 2026 financial year (FY26) as the Australian market had traded finished virtually unchanged on Tuesday with the S&P/ASX 200 index falling 1.2 points to 8,541.1.
The exceptions on the first day of FY26 were stocks in the consumer discretionary, materials and telecoms sectors, which finished higher.
Oil and gold stocks could begin higher following rises in their underlying commodity prices overnight, with healthcare stocks potentially also gaining ground if the U.S. pattern is followed.
Eyes will be on Australian retail trade and building approval data which will be released today, and on Graincorp (ASX: GNC) shares, which will trade ex-dividend.
On Australian fixed interest markets, yields dropped with 10 year Treasury bonds down 0.15% to 4.127% and two year bonds off 0.09% to 3.214%.
