Good morning and welcome to the ABC’s finance blog! I’ll be your guide for the next few hours.
The local share market is expected to open modestly lower, with ASX futures pointing to a 0.4% fall in morning trade.
The Australian dollar is also feeling the gloom, after slipping 0.7% to 65.1 US cents.
It comes after a downbeat session on Wall Street, which reacted badly to news on Friday (local time) that a US appeals court had found most of Donald Trump’s global tariffs to be illegal.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (in a 7-4 ruling) decided that only Congress has the power to apply sweeping import taxes.
Unsurprisingly, the US President decried the judgment as “Highly Partisan” and said he would file an appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Dow Jones index fell 0.6% to 45,296 points, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.7%, to 6,416 points and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.8%, to 21,280 points.
Another sign of investor nervousness could be seen in the price of gold, which hit a new record high.
The precious metal’s spot price surged 1.6% to $US3,532 an ounce.
Anyway, sit tight, drink some coffee (or tea) and I’ll have more updates for you shortly.