Live updates: Profit results dominate as ASX set for flat start

Good morning, in terms of market moves overall, it’s looking like a quiet day, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some interesting news around.

The Australian share market is set for a flat start to trade, with profit results likely to dominate.

US markets had a generally positive session on Friday, with the Nasdaq up 1.3% and the S&P 500 up 0.6%, although the blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average eased 0.1%.

“Fed funds pricing was little changed with a 19% chance of a cut in March and a cumulative 112 basis points for 2024, down slightly from 116bps on Thursday and 125bps last week,” noted NAB’s head of market economic Tapas Strickland.

“Yields continued with their drift higher with the 2-year yield +2.9bps to 4.48% (up some 11.5bps on the week) and similar for the 10-year at 2.4bps to 4.18% (up some 15.5bps on the week).

“The S&P500 rose 0.6% to a record high, closing above 5,000 for the first time.”

Despite the gains on Wall Street, the ASX futures are pointing to a completely flat start to trade locally, unchanged at 7,595 points.

The big shock on rates, is ANZ’s call that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand will hike twice more before it starts cutting rates

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“We are now forecasting 25-basis-point hikes in both February and April, taking the OCR [overnight cash rate] to 6%. We are now forecasting cuts from February 2025, ultimately taking the OCR back to 3.5% as before,” wrote ANZ’s chief New Zealand economist Sharon Zollner on Friday.

“The RBNZ warned in November that If inflation pressures were to be stronger than anticipated, the OCR would likely need to increase further.’ Data since then has been a series of small but pretty consistent surprises in that direction.”

So, while Australians are asking on search, “when will interest rates start falling”, if ANZ is right New Zealanders are more likely to be searching “will interest rates start falling” … or, perhaps, “bankruptcy lawyers”.