Overview
- The Reserve Bank of Australia is widely expected to hold the cash rate at 3.6% at 2:30pm AEDT, with markets focused on Governor Michele Bullock’s remarks an hour later for forward guidance.
- Australian shares were choppy ahead of the meeting, with the ASX200 up 0.15% to 8,894.8 and futures pointing slightly lower after the ABS reported 3.2% annual CPI last week.
- US indexes closed mixed on Monday as AI news drove gains: the S&P 500 rose 0.18% and the Nasdaq 0.46% while the Dow fell 0.46%, helped by Amazon’s record-setting jump on a US$38 billion AWS deal with OpenAI and Microsoft’s near US$9.7 billion capacity purchase from Iren.
- Nvidia advanced about 2% alongside other AI leaders, but breadth remained weak with most S&P 500 components lower despite tech-led strength.
- Company-specific news steered trading, including Westpac’s $6.9 billion FY profit that lifted bank stocks, Palantir beating estimates and guiding higher after the close, and Idexx surging on a quarterly earnings beat.