ASX cracks 9000-mark for first time; Brambles soars, James Hardie’s horror run continues

CBA made headlines this morning after it backflipped on a decision to cut 45 call centre jobs as it rolls out an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, admitting it made a mistake and failed to properly consider “all business considerations” when it made the cuts.

Super Retail Group, which owns the Rebel sports, Supercheap Auto and Macpac chains, jumped 12.3 per cent. The shares hit a record high after the company said it boosted sales by 4.5 per cent to a record $4.1 billion in the past financial year, with growth accelerating in the second half.

Bega Cheese jumped 7.7 per cent after the dairy company said its normalised operating earnings climbed 23 per cent to $202 million in the past year and would rise up to $220 million this year.

Shares in Northern Star Resources, Australia’s biggest gold producer, gained 0.5 per cent after the company said it more than doubled its net profit over the past financial year, helped by a higher gold price amid strong demand for haven assets amid tariff uncertainty for the global economy. Other gold stocks also gained. Evolution Mining was up 1.5 per cent and Newmont rose 1.7 per cent.

Consumer staples were up 2.1 per cent by the close, backed up by gains from Woolworths (up 2.7 per cent) and Coles (up 1.1 per cent).

The laggards

Missing out on the party, James Hardie’s horror sell-down continued, with the share price falling another 9.8 per cent after plummeting 27.8 per cent on Wednesday after the home cladding maker said its full-year net income was down 60 per cent as sales in its key US market declined. Demand in home repairs, renovations and new construction is “challenging”, it warned.

Real estate was the only sector finishing in the red, down 0.1 per cent, led by falls for property giant Goodman Group despite a $2.3 billion profit and data centre expansion plans.

The lowdown

The Australian sharemarket rallied past the 9000-mark to an all-time high after a string of solid results buoyed investor demand on one of the busiest days of reporting season.

Despite that, Capital.com senior market analyst Kyle Rodda said the record run was set up by Wall Street.

“We have seen a bit of strength coming through some cyclical areas in the market over [in the US] and that’s rubbed off on ours today,” he said.

Rodda said the bar was being set reasonably high for corporates to exceed when it came to earnings, with recent results showing downside misses have been punished more than the responses to upside surprises.

“The fact that we’ve got some of these big heavyweights falling throughout the week, yet markets still rocketing higher suggests that there’s more going on than local earnings season here,” he said.

But the ASX 200 breaching the 9000 mark is significant on a psychological level, pointing to a bullish sentiment in the market.

The flurry of local company results took investor attention away from Wall Street, where indexes ended mixed as the sell-down of AI superstars such as Nvidia continued, albeit at a more sedate pace.

Markets are in a wait-and-see mode as central bankers convene in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with investors awaiting remarks on Friday (Saturday AEST) from US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell.

The hope on Wall Street is that Powell will hint that cuts to interest rates are coming soon.

But National Australia Bank strategist Rodrigo Catril said the broader implication was “rising tensions between the Fed and the US administration”.

“Trump’s push to confirm Stephen Miran could add another vote for cuts in September, and if he was to successfully remove [top official at the Federal Reserve Lisa] Cook, the Fed board could end up with four members out of seven supporting his lower rates call.”

The Fed has kept its main interest rate steady this year, primarily because of the fear of the possibility that US President Donald Trump’s tariffs could push inflation higher. But a surprisingly weak report on job growth across the country may be superseding that.

Given the Fed is already split on rate cuts, “the balance is going to shift in favour of those doves, who are going to be more willing to look through tariff-driven inflation,” Ian Samson, a multi-asset portfolio manager at Fidelity International, said in a Bloomberg TV interview.

Trump has been angrily calling for lower interest rates, often insulting Powell personally while doing so. Trump on Wednesday called on a top official at the Federal Reserve, Lisa Cook, to resign after a member of his administration accused her of committing mortgage fraud.

With AAP, AP

The Market Recap newsletter is a wrap of the day’s trading. Get it each weekday afternoon.