ASX, NZX poised for muted end to the year as Wall St drifts ahead of Fed minutes
Xero founder Rod Drury has been knighted for his services to business.
Australian and New Zealand market are facing a quiet end to 2025 in the shortened trading day, with ASX futures pointing to a marginal dip across the Tasman, while the kiwi dollar largely went sideways through the Northern Hemisphere session.
Stocks on Wall Street edged lower ahead of the release of minutes to the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting, when the benchmark rate was cut in a divided decision, while gold and silver bounced from their sharp sell-off on Monday in the US.
Tesla was marginally softer losses after the electric vehicle maker took the unusual step of publishing sales estimates indicating softer deliveries in the fourth quarter than analysts were picking, while Meta Platforms agreed to purchase Singapore-based artificial intelligence startup Manus and Nvidia was said to be in talks to buy Israeli AI startup AI21 Labs.
And Xero founder Rod Drury is among those receiving New Year gongs, with the entrepreneur knighted for his services to business, the tech industry and philanthropy.
Happy New Year
Australian futures are pointing to a marginally soft start to the abbreviated trading day for the S&P/ASX 200 index today, with the trans-Tasman bourses poised to deliver positive returns for 2025 albeit at slower paces than North America and Europe.
The kiwi dollar was little changed at 58.03 US cents at 7am in Auckland from 58.08 cents yesterday, and traded at 86.59 Australian cents from 86.61 cents.
New Zealand’s currency traded at 4.0654 Chinese yuan from 4.0650 yuan yesterday, after China’s currency broke through a key level against the greenback for the first time since 2023, increasing the purchasing power of Chinese consumers and potentially benefiting local exporters targeting the world’s second-biggest economy such as a2 Milk Co and Comvita.
Stocks on Wall Street nudged lower, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.2% in late trading an the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite each edging down 0.1% ahead of the release of minutes to the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting.
The federal open market committee cut the federal funds rate to a range of 3.5%-to-3.75%, with broader dissension underlying the vote appearing in voting members’ predictions for the rate in the coming year.
Meanwhile, mining companies such as Newmont and Freeport-McMoran recovered from the prior session’s decline as gold and silver prices bounced from their sharp selloff. Gold futures nudged up 0.1% to US$4,383 an ounce at 7a in Auckland.
A new future
Megacap tech stocks were mixed, with Tesla marginally weaker after posting EV sales estimates for EVs in the fourth quarter which were down 15% from the prior year and lagged behind analysts’ expectations, while Nvidia dipped amid reports its in advanced talks to buy Israeli AI startup AI21 Labs
Meta Platforms gained after it agreed to buy Singapore-based AI startup Manus for more than US$2 billion.
Stocks in Europe were broadly stronger, with the UK’s FTSE up 0.8%, Germany’s DAX 30 gaining 0.6% and France’s CAC 40 advancing 0.7%.
And among New Zealand’s New Year honours list, Xero founder Rod Drury was knighted for his services to business, the tech industry and philanthropy. Other business luminaries to be honoured include Channel Infrastructure chair James Miller, former Hirepool chief Tenby Powell, and My Food Bag co-founder Cecilia Robinson.
Reporting by Paul McBeth. Image from Padraig Treanor on Unsplash.
