The Australian sharemarket extended its gains at lunchtime, rallying past the 9000-mark to an all-time high after a string of solid results buoyed investor demand on one of the busiest days of reporting season.

The S&P/ASX 200 climbed 91.60 points, or 1 per cent, to 9009.60 as of 1.07pm AEST in a broad market rally, with all the market’s 11 industry sectors in the green, led by industrials and consumer stocks. The Australian dollar was 0.2 per cent lower at US64.24¢.

A flurry of local company results took investor attention away from Wall Street, where indexes ended mixed as the sell-down of AI superstars such as Nvidia continued, albeit at a more muted pace.

Industrials giant Brambles was one of the biggest winners, surging more than 11 per cent after the pallet supplier announced a share buyback of up to $US400 million ($622.5 million) and declared a final dividend of US20.83¢ a share, taking its payout for the year to US39.83¢, up 17 per cent from the last year, as an efficiency drive helped it improve profits.

Mining giants Fortescue Metals and Rio Tinto also advanced, rising 1 per cent and 0.4 per cent, respectively. So did the big four banks, with CBA up 0.6 per cent, Westpac rising 1.2 per cent, NAB up 1.5 per cent and ANZ Bank up 1.4 per cent, respectively. Mining and financial stocks make up more than half of the ASX, so even smaller movements can steer the wider market.

CBA made headlines this morning after it backflipped on a decision to cut 45 call centre jobs as it rolls out an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, admitting it made a mistake and failed to properly consider “all business considerations” when it made the cuts.

Super Retail Group, which owns the Rebel sports, Supercheap Auto and Macpac chains, jumped 13.9 per cent. The shares hit a record high after the company said it boosted sales by 4.5 per cent to a record $4.1 billion in the past financial year, with growth accelerating in the second half.

Bega Cheese jumped 8.5 per cent after the dairy company said its normalised operating earnings climbed 23 per cent to $202 million in the past year and would rise up to $220 million this year.

Northern Star Resources, Australia’s biggest gold producer, saw its shares rise 1.2 per cent after the company said it more than doubled its net profit over the past financial year, helped by a higher gold price amid strong demand for safe haven assets amid tariff uncertainty for the global economy. Other gold stocks also gained. Evolution Mining was up 2.1 per cent and Newmont rose 1.8 per cent.

Missing out on the party, James Hardie’s horror sell-down continues, with the share price falling another 11.4 per cent after plummeting 27.8 per cent on Wednesday after the home cladding maker said its full-year net income was down 60 per cent as sales in its key US market declined. Demand in home repairs, renovations and new construction is “challenging”, it warned.

On Wall Street overnight, the action centred again around stocks caught up in the mania around artificial-intelligence technology. The S&P 500 dipped 0.2 per cent after losing as much as 1.1 per cent in early trade. The Dow Jones added less than 0.1 per cent, and the Nasdaq fell 0.7 per cent.

Nvidia, whose chips are powering much of the world’s move into AI, sank as much as 3.9 per cent during the morning and was on track to be the heaviest weight on Wall Street following its 3.5 per cent fall on Tuesday.

But it clawed back nearly all of Wednesday’s drop and finished with a dip of just 0.1 per cent. As it pared its loss, so did broad market indexes because Nvidia is Wall Street’s most influential stock by being its most valuable.

Palantir Technologies, another AI darling, fell 1.1 per cent to add to its 9.4 per cent loss from the day before, but it had been down as much as 9.8 per cent Wednesday morning.

One possible contributor to the swoon was a study from MIT’s Nanda Initiative that warned that most corporations are not yet seeing any measurable return from their generative AI investments, according to Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, global head of equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.

But the larger factor may be the simple criticism that prices for such stock simply shot too high, too fast amid the furor around AI and became too expensive. Nvidia, whose profit report scheduled for next week is one of Wall Street’s next major events, had soared 35.5 per cent for the year so far heading into Tuesday. Palantir had surged even more, more than doubling.

The week’s biggest news for Wall Street is likely arriving on Friday, when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will give a highly anticipated speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The hope on Wall Street is that Powell will hint that cuts to interest rates are coming soon.

The Fed has kept its main interest rate steady this year, primarily because of the fear of the possibility that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could push inflation higher. But a surprisingly weak report on job growth across the country may be superseding that.

Treasury yields have come down sharply on expectations for an easing of interest rates, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.29 per cent from 4.30 per cent late Tuesday.

Trump has been angrily calling for lower interest rates, often insulting Powell personally while doing so. Trump on Wednesday called on a top official at the Federal Reserve, Lisa Cook, to resign after a member of his administration accused her of committing mortgage fraud.

with AP

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