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Bell Direct

February 19, 2026

Starting in the US this morning, where Wall St saw a positive day lead by a rally in the technology sector. Megacap Nvidia lead the way with a 2% gain, after Meta announced that they would be expanding their deal to use millions of Nvidia AI chips in their data centre buildout. At the close of the day’s trade, the S&P500 advanced 0.6%, the Dow Jones added 0.3%, while the tech heavy Nasdaq saw the biggest gains with a 0.8% jump.

What to watch today:

Locally today, the ASX is expected to follow Wall St and add to its winning streak of late, with the SPI futures pointing to a 0.5% climb at the open of trade.
As for reporting season, it’s a busy day today with a stack of notable companies releasing results. Australia’s largest Telco Telstra (ASX:TLS) this morning announced a 9% increase in net profit to $1.1 billion, as its revenue remained flat however expenditure had declined. It will pay an interim dividend of 10.5 cents per share, up from 9.5 cents last year.
Although not released at time of recording, keep an eye on a number of big results to come out throughout this morning, including Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO), Wesfarmers (ASX:WES), Goodman Group (ASX:GMG) Whitehaven Coal (ASX:WHC), Downer (ASX:DOW) , among many more.
So far this reporting season, we’ve seen 83 companies release their results, with 31 beating expectations, 32 in line with expectations and 20 missing expectations.
Following their results yesterday, Bell Potter have upgraded their rating on TechnologyOne from a Hold to a buy, with a 12-month price target of $29 per share after the company reported their guidance for FY26.
And finally ending on commodities news, crude oil prices have jumped 4 and a half percent to US$65 per barrel as investors reacted to talks in both the US – Iran tensions and Russia – Ukraine conflict ending without clear breakthroughs. The geopolitical uncertainty has also affected precious metals prices, with gold rebounding 2% to just under US$5000 per ounce, while silver has jumped 5% to US$77 per ounce.