We'll wrap things up now.

Thanks for joining us today. And thank you for sending in such great questions and comments.  

We'll be back tomorrow morning to bring you up to speed on the major moves on U.S. markets overnight.

Will you be watching the leaders debate between Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton tonight? It begins at 7.30pm AEST. It will be aired by Sky News and the ABC will be running a live blog.

Until then, take care of yourselves.

Hi Phillip,

The numbers in the link below match the numbers I'm seeing in my Refinitiv account.

The futures for the main US stock markets are all pointing to a positive start for Wall Street.

Rabobank global strategist Michael Every is on The Business tonight with Kirsten Aiken.

A key question is whether he sees Australia being caught in the middle of what is, at essence, a cold war between the US and China.

Aiken:

"Do you see the time is approaching where Australia will be asked to choose between its biggest trading partner China and its biggest military ally, the United States?

Every:

"Yes. Very bluntly, yes." 

Aiken:

"How soon?"

Every:

"Again, within months, potentially. That's a worst case scenario."

You can watch the interview at 8:44pm AEDT on ABC News Channel or any time on iView.

We often talk about the dollar value of losses, so let's do the quick maths on today's gain.

The All Ordinaries index started the session with a market capitalisation of $2.54 trillion, according to LSEG.

The 2.4 per cent gain means it added about $60.7 billion in value during the session.

Yes, this is definitely a problem with long-term fixed rates.

Like Australia's reliance on housing stamp duties, they can act as a barrier to people moving house.

This can ultimately result in a much less efficient distribution of the housing stock, and a range of other economic inefficiencies — i.e. people not willing/able to move for a better job, etc.

The ASX 200 index rebounded today, closing 2.27 per cent higher.

But Kyle Rodda, senior financial market analyst at Capital.com, is suspicious.

"It has all the hallmarks of a dead cat bounce," he's written in his afternoon note.

"Correlations remain high — a characteristic of a volatile if not bearish market — with the sectoral rallies the biggest in those that saw the largest drawdowns yesterday.

"We are probably still in the eye of the storm, especially given that the jump on Wall Street last night that set the ASX200 up for a strong performance today was sparked by some very spurious news.

"If nothing else, headline risk will continue to drive big moves. 

"A sustained recovery will only come if, in the best case scenario, Trump backs away from the trade policy, offers big concessions to trading partners, or, at the very least, makes a final and firm commitment on the level of tariffs," he says.

As European traders settle down at their Bloomberg terminals ahead of their market opens, Swissquote Bank's Ipek Ozkardeskaya has published her daily note.

Here's some highlights:

"We're facing an avalanche of headlines: who's ready to negotiate, who's not, what did Trump say, what did he mean… it's nearly impossible to predict the next move," she laments.

"US Senator Elizabeth Warren called it the 'dumbest trade war' in history, pointing out that this turmoil isn't caused by a virus or a housing collapse — it's man-made and potentially fixable by simply rolling back tariffs.

"For now, Trump stands his ground, while world leaders oscillate between retaliation and negotiation.

"Meanwhile, big investors, US bank bosses, and even Elon Musk—the First Friend—are voicing criticism. Maybe internal pressure in the US will eventually shift the course."

Not that Ms Ozkardeskaya concludes with much optimism.

"One hope is that the worst is already priced in and that markets can only rebound from here. But the problem is: the worst keeps getting worse, and there's no reasonable limit in sight at the White House."

Do we need to pay attention to the recent turmoil in financial markets?  

Our chief business correspondent Ian Verrender has some thoughts.

He says the short answer is yes.

"That's primarily because the arcane world of stocks, bonds, currencies and derivatives trading — while generally unfathomable to most of us — can have profound real-world effects," he says.

"What's more, those effects now have a much quicker transmission process into our everyday lives than they once did."

Among the top performing stocks today (by percentage change) were Boss Energy (up 21 cents, +10%, to $2.31), Mesoblast (up 14.5 cents, +8.98%, at $1.76), and Block Inc (up $6.70, +8.72%, to $83.57).

Among the worst performers were HMC Capital (-21 cents, -4.23%, at $4.75), James Hardie (-98 cents, -2.84%, at $33.57 a share), and Mineral Resources (-47 cents, -2.81%, at $16.25).

Challenger's chief economist Jonathan Kearns worked in very senior roles at the RBA until he left in 2023 — most recently as head of domestic markets and before that heading the financial stability department.

He believes the RBA won't be easily spooked into more rate cuts by recent share market selling.

"I think we'll see almost certainly a cut in May, but I don't think the Reserve Bank is going to be panicking at this stage," he told Kirsten Aiken on The Business last night.

"And so I think market expectations for up to five cuts this year are overdone." 

Aiken:

"What do you think of the financial market pricing in a better than even chance of a 50 basis point cut in May? Could that eventuate?" 

Kearns:

"It could, but I think we need to see a lot more before we would get there. Remember, the Reserve Bank bails out the economy, not financial markets, and so it's not going to be responding to the fall in financial markets, per se, it's going to be responding to what it thinks the economic implications might be, and so it will need to see a lot more data on exactly how other countries are responding in terms of tariffs, and also how they're going to respond in terms of stimulus."

Aiken:

"The markets are clearly concerned enough they're repricing risk right now. Is there a chance that the RBA could hold an emergency meeting to cut rates before May 20?"

Kearns:

"I think we're a long way from the Reserve Bank needing to bring forward their meeting to have a cut in rates, because at the moment, what we're seeing is things are still functioning well. We've got a large repricing of the markets, but asset prices have been very high. They've been going up very substantially. Some of that's been removed now but, for the time being, the economy is still operating very well."