Keeping you up to date with the latest market moves, in association with Investment firm Jarden.
International
US
The S&P 500 continued to extend its rally overnight, driven by earnings season and yesterday’s Fed decision.
Jarden Brief: Facebook owner Meta has huge jump after surprise ad boom
nzme
4 mins to read
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company's value surged overnight after a surprisingly lucrative fourth quarter. Photo / Bloomberg
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US shares turned positive on Thursday morning following an in-line rate decision from the US Federal Reserve to raise rates by 25 basis points.
However, Chair of the Reserve Jerome Powell made it clear he did not expect to make any rate cuts this year – and reiterated the possibility of further rate increases.
Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, soared by 25 per cent after it reported higher-than-expected sales for the 4th quarter of 2022, boosted by strong demand for advertising on its social network.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company’s focus for 2023 will be on becoming more efficient, while also making progress in its investments in AI.
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The reporting season is set to continue in the US, with tech giants Amazon and Apple set to release earnings after the closing bell.
Rest of the World
Despite the deceleration in rate hikes in the US, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank stayed the course – both raising their rates by 50 basis points.
The Bank of England’s headline interest rate has now reached a 14-year high of 4 per cent, while the European key rate has moved to 2.5 per cent.
Embattled Indian conglomerate Adani Group has cancelled its US$2.4 billion equity fundraising, following a 27 per cent drop in shares in response to allegations of fraud and stock manipulation by short seller Hindenburg Research.
Efforts to ease investor concerns, including a 413-page response to the short seller’s allegations, have failed to stop the decline in stock price.
Despite the deal being reportedly fully backed by institutional investors, Adani has said that they cancelled the process as it was ‘not morally correct’ amidst its current stock price volatility.
Meanwhile, petrol company Shell reported its highest-ever annual profit of US$39.9 billion for 2022, slightly above analysts’ expectations of US$38.3 billion.
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The results follow similar strong earnings from US oil majors Exxon Mobil and Chevron, with the sector’s combined profits expected to approach a whopping US$200 billion for the year.
Australia
Centuria Office REIT climbed 8.0 per cent after it announced its first half result yesterday.
The largest listed pure-play office fund on the ASX stated it had increased its occupancy rate to 96.4 per cent across the half, and executed 35 transactions.
Management also pushed back on speculation that office demand had decreased since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that they were seeing increasing demand for affordable metro and city-fringe offices – a trend they expect to continue in the near term.
New Zealand
The NZX 50 gained 0.5 per cent yesterday following the rate hike decision from the US in the morning, albeit with little local news flow.
December’s employment numbers suggested labour market conditions continued to tighten.
Data from recruitment software company JobAdder suggested the number of applications per job in NZ had increased to 13.4 in the fourth quarter last year, compared with 8.5 applications per job in the same period in 2021.
ANZ and BNZ are the latest banks to lower their fixed rate home loan rates in response to the global optimism around inflation, as well as moderating long term bond yields in New Zealand.
ANZ now offers the lowest 2-year and 3-year rates at 6.45 per cent and 6.59 per cent, respectively, while Kiwibank offers the lowest 1-year fixed rate at 6.49 per cent.
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