We'll end our markets live coverage here and thank you for staying with us.
Same time tomorrow morning, our team will be back on deck with the very latest.
Have a great evening and bye for now!
We'll end our markets live coverage here and thank you for staying with us.
Same time tomorrow morning, our team will be back on deck with the very latest.
Have a great evening and bye for now!
The ASX 200 is poised for an eighth straight session of declines — its longest losing streak since 2018, IG markets analyst Tony Sycamore says.
"This would see the index sign off on around 1.8% gain in April, a disappointing result after being up over 6% earlier in the month," he said.
Woolworths has warned that surging inflation will hurt its profit, sending the Australian supermarket giant's share price tumbling.
And while Woolworths might be promising to lock in the price for 300 items, there's growing concern about the rate at which other costs are rising, including for plastic packaging.
Are the worst fears about this energy crisis starting to play out?
Carrington Clarke and business reporter Emilia Terzon have more in today's episode.
And finally, Yeaman asks Chalmers about AI.
Yeaman says we've had a productivity malaise in Australia for "a couple of decades" but he's optimistic that AI could help our productivity to start increasing noticeably in three to five years.
Chalmers says he thinks AI will help to lift our productivity if it's managed well and safely.
CHALMERS: Our thing about productivity, AI is a huge part of our thinking about productivity, particularly into the future, but not the only part. Compliance costs would be a big focus of the Budget, making it quicker and easier to build stuff, making us more attractive as an investment destination, some of the things that you talked about a moment ago. These are all parts of the productivity puzzle.
The difference between now in 2026 to 1986, is that in order to shift this stubborn productivity under-performance over a long period of time, we're going to have to do a lot of things at once. A lot of medium-sized things at once. What people will see in the Budget, if I can land this productivity package in the next week or so, is people will see a genuine effort to do quite a lot on productivity. Part of that's AI, but there's a lot of other stuff in there too.
But Chalmers says Australians' concerns about AI should not be dismissed either, because people are fearful of losing their jobs.
CHALMERS: There's a lot of anxiety about how the workforce will change. In it's best version of AI, it makes people's jobs easier and augments jobs, rather than have this kind of mass displacement of workers.
[Our] job is to make people beneficiaries of change rather than victims of change and AI is one of the easiest ways to understand how we can get that really right or get it really wrong.
Microsoft, Amazon and Google posted strong growth in their cloud divisions as they continue to back multiple AI models, effectively diversifying individual risks, says Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote.
"Amazon, for example, delivered its fastest cloud growth in more than three years, with spending rising above analyst expectations," she said.
"The share price fluctuated between gains and losses before bulls took control, driving a nearly 3% jump."
Ms Ozkardeskaya said Google shares surged around 7% in after-hours trading after beating expectations, while Microsoft's Azure posted 39% growth, reinforcing the idea that massive AI spending is now translating into revenue.
"Its after-hours price action remained mixed, leaving the stock roughly flat."
Meta, however, she added, slumped sharply after announcing higher spending, now projecting between $US135–145 billion. Shares slumped more than 7% in the after-hours.
"The issue is positioning: Meta is essentially a single bet, investing heavily in its own ecosystem, whereas the other three are supplying infrastructure—offering computing power and chips to benefit from the broader expansion of AI.
"At this stage, Meta looks like a more concentrated and riskier play, especially as competition intensifies," Ms Ozkardeskaya added.
Prices current around 4:30pm AEST
Live updates on the major ASX indices:
The Australian share market has finished the day lower, down 0.2% at 8,665 points.
The index has lost 1.5% over the last five days but is virtually unchanged year to date.
Overall, the market had 109 stocks gaining, 3 unchanged and 88 stocks in the red.
When looking at the sectors, Energy was at the top, up 1.4%, followed by Technology, up 1.1%, and then Industrials, up 0.9%.
There were three sectors in the red today.
Consumer Non-Cyclicals finished at the bottom, down 4.6%, followed by Materials and Healthcare, down 2.6% and 0.5%, respectively.
Among companies, the top mover was ASX, up 5.2%, followed by Generation Development Group, up 5.1%.
It wasn't a good day for Deep Yellow, down 8.8%, followed by Silex Systems, down 8.5%.
The Australian dollar is pretty flat at 71.17 US cents.
The Federal Government has announced it will invest an initial $126.9 million to establish solid rocket motor production in Australia to strengthen "the nation’s sovereign defence industrial base, resilience and self-reliance".
Solid rocket motors provide the propulsion required for most guided weapons and are in high demand worldwide, the government says.
In a statement, the government has also confirmed that Northrop Grumman Australia, selected as the preferred industry partner, will help establish domestic manufacturing of solid rocket motors.
Australia will begin by producing rocket motors for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missile at Mulwala by 2030, it says.
Mr Yeaman asked Chalmers about "stagflation".
He says the word has come up a bit in recent months, there's been a lot of talk of the 1970s and discussions about the similarities and differences to that decade.
Yeaman says stagflation is not just an "episode", it's a drawn-out period - a persistent period of higher inflation and lower growth.
He says RBA economists have been warning about the risk of inflation expectations becoming de-anchored during this global energy shock and how that would feed into the stagflationary dynamics.
Chalmers says some of the discussion about stagflation has been oversimplified and he didn't think people were paying enough attention to the prevailing strength of Australia's labour market at the moment.
CHALMERS: What worries me a little bit about this conversation about stagflation is it feels a bit oversimplified.
What I mean by that is if people are saying we're going to have upward pressure on inflation and downward pressure on growth, of course, those are the costs and consequences of a big oil shock coming from war in the Middle East. We saw that in this week's inflation figures. The primary driver of inflation is the hefty price that people are paying in Australia for that war on the other side of the world.
But what that simplification doesn't allow for is the tremendous strength of our labour market, for example. I care a lot about the labour market. It comes back to that first question you asked me about our reason for being. I care about the people-facing part of the economy and the labour market's the easiest way to understand that.
Our labour market's in extraordinarily good nick, and in a way that's not consistent with how we might have traditionally thought about stagflation.
We don't have unemployment galloping at seven, eight, nine, ten per cent. We don't have unemployment as high as other countries with which we compare ourselves. That's why I think some of this, not to criticise anyone, but some of this discussion can risk being oversimplified.
Back in 2022, when talk of stagflation picked up in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I wrote a piece that explained why the stagflation of the 1970s was unique, why Australia's economy was different today, and why it was highly unlikely that stagflation, if it occurred today, would be anywhere as severe at it was back then. Those arguments still apply today.
Continued..
There have been tense exchanges in the Federal Court, with the judge overseeing the bombshell case between the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and Woolworths questioning the consumer watchdog's case.
The day began with the ACCC's legal counsel Michael Hodge KC giving closing remarks, but it was not long before Justice Michael O'Bryan intervened.
Woolworths has been accused of misleading shoppers with fake discounts on more than 260 items that were sold under its Prices Dropped promotions.
The ACCC claimed shoppers thought they were saving money on items being sold on Prices Dropped tickets, when they were actually paying more than the previous regular price.
Our national consumer affairs reporter Michael Atkin and the Specialist Reporting Team's Lucy Kent have more.