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Overnight in the US Wall St was a sea of red as all 3 major indexes saw sizeable declines. The Dow Jones fared the best, falling 0.53%, while the S&P500 retreated 1.17%, and the Nasdaq was hit the hardest, closing down 2.04%. The AI sector remains the most in focus as investors continue to be concerned that valuations far outweigh fundamentals – big names such as Oracle, AMD, Nvidia and Amazon all pulled back, while Palantir shares dropped 9% after releasing its quarterly results despite beating guidance.

Both Europe and Asia saw similar trends overnight, as the majority of the major markets closed in the red. In Europe, the German DAX and French CAC fell 0.76% and 0.52%, although the UK’s FTSE was the exception, advancing 0.14%. In Asia, China’s CSI, the Hong Kong Hang Seng and Japan’s Nikkei all closed down over 0.75%.

Locally yesterday, the ASX200 dropped 0.9% to its lowest point in nearly 6 weeks off the back of the RBA’s monthly cash rate meeting, as governor Michelle Bullock warned that there could be more inflationary pressure in the economy than expected. Although the RBA’s decision to leave the rate unchanged was widely expected, the cautious tone regarding inflation in their monetary policy statement left investors concerned.

Utilities saw the biggest decline on the day amid plans by the federal government to force power companies into offering customers 3 free hours of power in the middle of the day – Origin Energy (ASX:ORG) and AGL (ASX:AGL) slipped 3.8 and 3.7% respectively.

What to watch today:

• Ahead of today’s trading session however, the SPI futures indicate that the ASX will rebound with a 0.2% jump at the open.
• In commodities, prices across the board have seen drops over the last 24 hours. Gold has continued its slump, trading down 1.8% to 3930 USD per ounce, Silver has dropped over 2% to 47 USD per ounce, crude oil is also trading down 1.1% to 60USD and 37 cents per barrel, and Iron ore is down 1.25% to 104.50 USD per tonne.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter has maintained its Buy rating on cyber security provider Spirit Technology Solutions (ASX:ST1), and raised its 12 month price target from 60 cents to 65 cents per share. At the current price of 55 cents per share, this implies a 15% share price growth within the year.
• And Trading Central have identified a bearish signal in Bapcor Ltd (ASX:BAP), indicating that the price may fall from the close of $2.42 to the range of $1.65 – $1.80 over a period of 9 days according to the standard principles of technical analysis.