Stocks on Wall Street were broadly stronger after cloud services firm Oracle’s double-digit revenue growth gave the green light to artificial intelligence optimists, buoying the likes of chipmaker Nvidia.
Amazon and Alphabet were a touch weaker with major outages at AWS and Google disrupting internet services around the world.
Meanwhile, Boeing sank and airlines were generally weaker after an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed in the city of Ahmedabad, killing more than 260 people in the plan and on the ground.
The greenback was broadly weaker after US President Donald Trump said he’ll be telling trading partners what tariffs they’ll be facing in the coming two weeks, although a deal with the European Union is expected to be one of the last to be concluded.
A rosy future
Oracle surged 14% after the cloud services firm beat analysts’ forecasts as it lifted May quarter revenue 11% and raised its outlook for revenue growth in the coming year with stronger growth anticipated for its cloud applications and cloud infrastructure businesses. Chipmaker Nvidia was up on the news and stocks on Wall Street were broadly stronger with the S&P 500 up 0.3% in late trading.
Meanwhile, Google-parent Alphabet and Amazon were both on the red side of the ledger with reports that outages at Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform were disrupting internet services in the US, such as Spotify, Discord and Twitch.
The yield on 10-year US Treasuries fell 5 basis points to 4.36% after softer US jobs and producer prices data prompted traders to increase their bets on the Federal Reserve cutting the fed funds rate.
The kiwi dollar rose to 60.64 US cents at 7am in Auckland from 60.32 cents yesterday, with the greenback broadly weaker as US President Donald Trump signalled tariff rates on trading partners will be set in the coming fortnight.
“The US dollar declined against G10 currencies during Asian trade yesterday, as worries over US tariffs increased, after President Trump said he would notify trading partners of unilateral levy rates within two weeks,” Bank of New Zealand senior interest rate strategist Stuart Ritson said in a note. “The move lower continued overnight with the dollar index falling below the level it reached in early April.”
Thorny issues
US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said he was optimistic a deal with the European Union will be reached, but that it will probably be at the end of the process, given the tricky details to negotiations.
Meanwhile, Boeing shares fell 4.8% after an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed in Ahmedabad not long after take-off. Of the 242 people onboard, there was one survivor. Carriers were also weaker, with American Airlines down 1.8% and United Airlines falling 1.5%.
European stock markets were mixed with the UK’s FTSE 100 index up 0.2% as higher oil and gold prices buoyed energy and mining companies, while Germany’s DAX 30 declined 0.7% as investors fret over America’s trade policy.
Australian futures are pointing to a 0.1% increase for the S&P/ASX 200 index.
Local data today include the BNZ-BusinessNZ performance of manufacturing index.
Reporting by Paul McBeth. Image from Raw Pixel.
