Good Afternoon and welcome to HotCopper’s Market Close for Wednesday 14th of May, I’m Jon Davidson.
The market rose above the flatline in the last hour of trade to take us to a finish up just over one tenth of a percent. Trump has been busy making deals in the Middle East, but it was NVIDIA’s move to send AI chips to Saudi Arabia that locked in American optimism. Not so for Australia, with Aristocrat Leisure and a selloff in Macquarie shares helping to keep the bourse subdued.
So who was in the green?
But at least there was Woodside. While the company stayed quiet in terms of ASX announcements, local investors were bullish on the supermajor given that Saudi Aramco has agreed to buy into its US-based LNG project in Louisiana. Woodside jumped nearly 3.7% to $22.38 per share.
Elsewhere, family safety app Life360, or an app to track your loved ones depending on how you look at it, posted results which were more than gladly received by Australian investors ever hungry for local tech offerings. Shares jumped nearly +9%, gaining for the second day in a row, after earnings were released earlier this week.
And so what about the reds?
Macquarie Group fell 1.7% at close to hit $211.69 per share on Wednesday as ASIC took the investment bank to court for the fourth time in the last year. HotCopper users may be feeling vindicated after the regulator effectively accused Macquarie of under-reporting short sales over around a decade, which may or may not confirm users’ beliefs in a short selling conspiracy. Then again, losses pared off in the second half of the day, suggesting nobody is really too surprised.
Finally, let’s look at Aristocrat Leisure, a company capped at $39 billion which really helped tank the market today. As net profits fell -21% in the half year period, compared to that of last year’s, so too did Aristocrat’s share price, down over -8% to $62.49 cents per share. The pokie machine maker and gambling company broadly missed expectations, and in doing so, nearly dragged the entire market into the red for the day. Thank god for Woodside.
That’s Market Close for Wednesday, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great night and we’ll see you on Thursday.