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Wall Street closed mixed on Friday with the Dow Jones rising to yet another record high, ending the day up 0.09% to 42,063 points while the S&P500 and Nasdaq each retreated 0.19% and 0.36% respectively. Investors fear the Fed is needing to cut rates aggressively to avoid a recession as inflation is coming down faster than expected.

Over in Europe, markets closed lower on Friday following a slew of central bank decisions in the region including the Bank of England holding rates steady for the month ahead despite the Fed cutting rates. The STOXX 600 fell 1.45% on Friday while Germany’s DAX lost 1.5%, the French CAC fell 1.51% and, in the UK, the FTSE100 ended the day down 1.2%.

Across the Asia markets on Friday, it was sea of green at the close after the Bank of Japan kept its benchmark interest rate steady at around 0.25% for the next period. Japan’s Nikkei rose 2.8%, China’s CSI index added 0.16%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.27% and South Korea’s Kospi Index ended the day up 0.5%.

Locally on Friday the ASX200 rose to yet another record close, ending the day up 0.2% at 8209.50 points, tracking global optimism on the back of the Fed’s 50bps rate cut announced earlier last week. Consumer discretionary stocks led the charge on Friday with a 1.12% gain while tech stocks rose 0.56% and utilities stocks ended the day up 0.41%. For the week the ASX200 rose 1.35%.
 Department store giant Myer fell more than 10% on Friday after reporting a slump in profit and sales for FY24 with results including total profit after tax falling 26% to $52.6m and the company’s dividend was cut to 5cps.

Telix Pharmaceuticals on the other hand rocketed over 7% on Friday after the cancer imaging and therapy producer announced Cardinal Health as its US commercial distributor for Zircaix, the company’s kidney imaging agent which is currently in FDA submission stages for approval.

What to watch today:

• Ahead of the first trading session of the new week the SPI futures are expecting the ASX to open the day down 0.82%.
• On the commodities front this morning, oil is trading 0.16% higher at US$71.13/barrel, gold is flat at US$2621.53/ounce and iron ore is down 0.11% at US$91.93/tonne.
• The Aussie dollar has strengthened to buy US$0.68 cents, 97.89 Japanese Yen, 51.3 British Pence and NZ$1.09.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter has initiated coverage of Coles Group (ASX:COL) with a buy rating and 12-month price target of $21.55 as the analyst sees Coles as providing an attractive earnings growth profile through to FY27 on an underlying basis with high levels of cash generation supporting growth in dividends.
• And Trading Central has identified a bullish signal on Lindsay Australia (ASX:LAU) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 41-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may rise from the close of 94cps to the range of $1.03 to $1.05 according to standard principles of technical analysis.