Goodson said attention remained on the US and the market’s explosive performance on the back of shares related to artificial intelligence (AI), such as chip maker Nvidia.
“One of the things a lot of people miss about Wall Street is just how dominated that market performance has been by very narrow segments of the market,” Goodson said.
“So there are quite a few sectors in the US that are actually down in the calendar year to date.”
Led by a handful of tech stocks, it had been a very narrow advance for the US market.
“When you start to see the emergence of these circular deals amongst the AI players and some highly speculative stocks doing relatively well, it [the rally] is starting to feel pretty long in the tooth,” Goodson said.
Domestically, there was little in the way of corporate news, aside from updates from retailer Briscoe Group and telco Spark.
Shares in Briscoe ended 10c down at $5.40 after the group released its third-quarter sales report, which showed total group sales fell by 1.76% in the quarter.
Managing director Rod Duke said the company intended to improve margins over the fourth quarter as it approached the important Christmas season.
“Margin and cost pressures continue to affect the bottom line but we remain hopeful that recent OCR [Official Cash Rate] reductions will boost consumer confidence and drive retail spend during the crucial final trading period,” Duke said.
Looking ahead, Duke was cautious about the retail environment.
There was no change to Spark’s earnings outlook at the company’s annual meeting and chief executive Jolie Hodson said she expected economic conditions to remain subdued in the near term.
Goodson noted the comment on the economy.
“Some companies are starting to see an improvement, but Spark isn’t as yet, and that probably makes sense because the stock’s been very weak in recent years,“ he said.
“Now they’ve been under a fair bit of competitive pressure, and they have quite a bit of exposure to the government sector, which is obviously not buoyant.”
Spark shares closed 5c down at $2.29.
Among the other movements, Scales finished 19c or 3.22% up at $6.09.
On the downside, transportation technology company Eroad lost 18.5c to finish at $1.60.
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