Wall Street closed the week, maybe not in a blind panic, but there was certainly a disquieting dumping of stocks as investors fled to the exits and the weekend.<\/p>\n
All three key indices fell sharply, the tech-centric Nasdaq fell the hardest and is down almost 8% from its record high of just three weeks ago.<\/p>\n
S&P 500: 1.8%Dow: -1.1%Nasdaq: 2.9%<\/p>\n
The dump saw the global MSCI down 1.5% for the day, while the pan-continental Eurostoxx 600 fell a comparatively modest 0.4%.<\/p>\n
The tech-lite ASX is unlikely to be as affected by anxieties over cash-burning AI investments as Wall Street was on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When trading closed on Saturday morning (AEDT) ASX 200 futures were flat, or to be precise 4 points (0.04%) lower.<\/p>\n
The tech rout was sparked by disappointing quarterly results from Intel and Amazon released late on Thursday.<\/p>\n
While Amazon pared losses as the session progressed, Intel shares cratered, down almost 30%.<\/p>\n
Chip stocks veered sharply lower, with Nvidia down more than 4%.<\/p>\n
The broader chips index shed 7.2%, slumping to a monthly loss of more than 15%. Server makers Dell and HP dropped 10.8% and 9.6%, respectively.<\/p>\n
“It’s fair to say that this week, not just today, has been very much about the future of AI and what that’s going to look like, whether there will be a positive return on investment and if so, how quickly,” Wealthspire Adivors Oliver Pursche told Reuters.<\/p>\n
“Companies that are performing and meeting the very lofty expectations that have been set are doing well,” Mr Pursche said.<\/p>\n
“Those that are falling short and seem to be missing the mark or not executing as expected are getting punished.”<\/p>\n
On the subject of being punished, cryptocurrency related firms all got walloped on the news that hackers nicked a lazy $US6.3 billion ($9 billion) worth of various stable coins, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, while no-one was looking at the world’s biggest crypto exchange Binance.<\/p>\n
Listed crypto firms Coinbase, Strategy and Robin Hood all fell between 7 and 11%. All said they were safe, but they would say that.<\/p>\n
Putting aside the Binance contretemps, it’s worth noting that hackers have made off with about $US3 billion in crypto in around 150 incidents.<\/p>\n
US Treasuries were one of the beneficiaries of the tech rout as investors decided they were a safer bet at the moment, which is saying something.<\/p>\n
The benchmark 10-year yield closed the month with its biggest monthly drop in nearly three years.<\/p>\n
Gold, once also considered a safe haven, didn’t benefit from the conniptions \u2014 indeed, it slumped (-3.5%) to a one-year low, along with other precious metals. Silver shed 6.5% and palladium shed 3.0%.<\/p>\n
“The sky is falling,” independent metals trader Tai Wong told Reuters with a dramatic flourish.<\/p>\n
“Metals will not be able to escape the gravity well of a nasty stock correction. Earnings have been the foundation of the AI rally and now that pillar is showing some cracks.”<\/p>\n
Oil seems to be blithely ignoring Mr Wong’s “gravity well”. The key benchmarks both gained more than 2% on Friday.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures: +2.4% to $US117.64\/barrelWTI crude futures: +2.1% to $US113.43\/barrel<\/p>\n
For the month, Brent finished almost 14% higher, while WTI rose even more, up 15%.<\/p>\n
On Friday, a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz was hit by explosive devices, believed to be limpet mines attached by a small boat, according to UKMTO, the British maritime security service.<\/p>\n
It is believed to be the first successful use of limpet mines since the war began in February. Probably not the last either.<\/p>\n
With Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wall Street closed the week, maybe not in a blind panic, but there was certainly a disquieting dumping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2001,64,63,166,2009,99,2005,160,2010,2006,2002,1491],"class_list":["post-949219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-asx","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-dollar","tag-bitcoin","tag-business","tag-dow-jones","tag-live-blog","tag-live-update","tag-nyse","tag-share-market","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}