Australian share prices are set to recoup some of their previous day losses and defy the overnight trend on Wall Street when trading resumes on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on Wednesday.
The ASX’s main share price index is likely to open about 0.2% higher as the corporate reporting season continues, despite two of the three major price markers ending lower in New York overnight.
At the time of writing, the S&P/ASX 200 September share price index (SPI) contract was trading 20 points over the prior settlement at 8,875 points.
Falling technology stocks like Nvidia dragged the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 lower on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) as the market awaited guidance on the path of interest rates from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at a conference this week.
The Fed's annual symposium at Jackson Hole in Wyoming from Thursday to Saturday (Friday to Sunday AEST) will be closely watched by markets.
"It seems like folks are hedging a little going into Jackson Hole, thinking Powell might be more hawkish than markets currently appreciate," Harris Financial Group Managing Partner James Cox was quoted in a Reuters story as saying.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average bucked the negative U.S. tone but ended basically flat, while the S&P dropped 0.59% and the Nasdaq shed 1.46% with Nvidia suffering its largest drop in almost four months, 3.5%.
The Australian market on Tuesday pulled back from a record close on Monday in response to a raft of company results, with the S&P/ASX 200 index shedding 0.7%.
Among the stocks likely to be followed more closely are those that reported on Tuesday, such as CSL (ASX: CSL), which suffered its largest single-day fall, and Seek (ASX: SEK), which headed in the other direction, and those with results today, such as Santos (ASX: STO) and Stockland (ASX: SGP).
In fixed interest markets, yields on Australian Government bonds dropped, with two-year rates down 0.24% to 3.363% and 10-year rates off by 0.02% to 4.391%.
