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Wall Street closed mixed again on Wednesday as investors reacted to comments made by federal reserve officials this week signalling rates need to stay higher for longer in order to tame inflation to the target rate. The Dow Jones industrial average posted its sixth straight winning day, ending the session up 0.44% to notch the longest green streak in 2024, while the S&P500 closed just 0.03% lower and the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 0.18%, weighed down by poor corporate earnings results. Uber shares fell 5.7% on Wednesday after the ride share giant posted an unexpected net loss and weaker-than-expected booking revenue, while Tesla shares dipped 1.7% on reports the company allegedly committed wire fraud as part of a probe into Tesla’s autopilot system, according to Reuters.

Over in Europe on Wednesday, markets extended the recent rally into the midweek session as investors continued reacting positively to key corporate earnings results. The STOXX600 rose 0.3%, Germany’s DAX added 0.37%, the French CAC climbed 0.7%, and, in the UK, the FTSE100 rose 0.5%. Siemens Energy rose 12.8% after raising its outlook for 2024. Sweden’s Bank cut the nation’s interest rates for the first time in 8 years on Wednesday in another sign of European regions digressing from U.S. lead on the rate front.

Across Asia markets on Wednesday, earnings results weighed on investor sentiment in the region which sent markets into negative territory. Japan’s Nikkei led losses with a 1.63% decline as investors responded to disappointing corporate earnings results including out of Toyota and Mitsubishi.

Locally on Wednesday, the ASX traded virtually flat all day before ending the up 0.14% to extend this week’s rally into the midweek session driven by industrial and information tech stocks rallying 0.73% and 0.6% respectively.

Perpetual confirmed it is parting ways with its high value corporate trust business to US private equity firm, KKR, for $2.18bn. On the same day, Perpetual chief executive Rob Adams announced his retirement from the global financial services organisation.  This division of the business has been a key driver of Perpetual’s global success and growth in recent times which may be why investors responded so negatively on Wednesday with the share price plunging 6.95%.

Goodman Group hit a record high intra-day yesterday before investors took some profits after the industrial property company released an impressive third quarter update including upgrading FY24 earnings guidance for a second time, with the company now expecting EPS growth of 13% in FY24. Goodman reported 4.9% like-for-like net property income growth on properties in its partnerships, 98% occupancy across the partnerships, $80.5bn total property portfolio value, and the leasing of 2.3million sqm across the platform over the last 12-months equating to $369m of rental income per annum.

What to watch today:

• Ahead of the local trading session here today, the SPI futures are expecting the ASX to open Thursday’s session down 0.24% on global market turbulence overnight.
• AU$1.00 is buying US$0.66, 102.35 Japanese Yen, 52.57 British pence and NZ$1.10.
• On the commodities front this morning oil is trading 1.1% higher at US$79.24/barrel, gold is down 0.23% at US$2309.80/ounce and iron ore is down 0.73% at US$118.69/tonne.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter has increased the 12-month price target on Alpha HPA (ASX:A4N) from $1.75 to $1.95 and maintain a speculative buy rating on the specialty metals and technology company following the release of a comprehensive market update including an increase in the price outlook for HPA equivalent, increased demand and Alpha HPA’s high purity aluminium products having value adding applications across lithium ion battery, micro-LED and semiconductor manufacturing.
• And Trading Central has identified a bullish signal on Nufarm (ASX:NUF) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 10-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may rise from the close of $5.25 to the range of $5.57 to $5.65 according to standard principles of technical analysis.