Good morning and welcome to another day on the markets.
And it’s another session, another record for US stocks.
The S&P 500 edged up just 0.1% to 6,715 points, while the Nasdaq made a more convincing high, rising 0.4% to 22,844 points.
Miners (+1%) and tech (+0.4%) led the way on Wall Street’s benchmark index.
Tech was partly boosted by hopes the US government shutdown will knock around 0.1 percentage point off US economic growth every week it drags on, and thus force the Federal Reserve’s hand into more aggressive rate cuts.
Remember, a lot of big tech may be domiciled in the US, but its customer base is global.
So far at least, the prospect of falling US interest rates appears to boost valuations more than stagnating US growth hurts them.
Notable gains included Coinbase (+7.5%), Robinhood Markets (+4.7%), Block (+4.7%) and Intel (+3.8%).
They were offset by some big name losses, most notably Tesla, which slumped 5.1% to $436, joined by fellow auto maker General Motors (-3.2%).
Despite the overall gains on Wall Street, the local market looks set to open flat, with the ASX 200 futures down just 4 points to 8,968 points.
The Aussie dollar has also eased back to 65.93 US cents.
Stay around for today’s blog as we try and make sense of the mayhem around us.
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