The year in review: The Australian share market is a tale of two halves
As the financial year comes to a close, the ASX closes on a positive note
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The benchmark index of the Australian share market, the ASX 200, is up by 7.72 percent at 7,759.6 points in the financial year-to-date as the final day of trading gets underway. Following a positive trading session on Wall Street overnight, the ASX 200 was expected to open higher today.
FY24 has been a tale of two halves, with the ASX 200 drifting down from July to October and hitting a 52-week low of 6,751.3 points on 30 October. A rally began in November as speculation of interest rate cuts in the United States and Australia began following substantial falls in inflation and growing excitement over artificial intelligence and its potential to meaningfully raise productivity worldwide.
The ASX 200 ascended to an all-time high of 7,910.5 points in April, following new records also set in the United States for the S&P 500 and NASDAQ Composite indexes at the time (these US market records have since been superseded). The S&P 500 and NASDAQ Composite have outperformed the Australian share market by more than 3:1 in FY24. The S&P 500 is up 23.2 percent and the NASDAQ is up 29.5 percent in the financial year-to-date.
Powering the NASDAQ’s performance has been the ‘Magnificent Seven’ stocks of Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Tesla. Nvidia is the leader of the pack for share price growth, having revolutionised the global IT industry with its graphics processing units (GPUs) that accelerate computing and have become essential in supporting artificial intelligence. Its GPU chips power programs like ChatGPT. Nvidia stock is up 193 percent in FY24 due to sensational earnings growth.
On the ASX 200, the stocks that have risen the most over FY24 are cancer radiopharmaceutical company Clarity Pharmaceuticals (up 624 percent), buy now, pay later provider Zip Co (up 265 percent), social networking app developer Life360 (up 113 percent), medical imaging software developer Pro Medicus (up 113 percent) and gold miner Red 5 (up 95 percent).
All of the ASX 200 bank shares except Bank of Queensland hit multi-year high share prices in FY24, with National Australia Bank leading the pack with a 37 percent gain. Top broker Goldman Sachs has described Australian banks as the most expensive bank stocks in the world and “in uncharted valuation territory” at today’s share prices. This week, the Commonwealth Bank came very close to overtaking mining behemoth BHP as Australia’s most valuable company by market capitalisation, after reaching a 52-week high of $128.68per share on Tuesday.
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China is Australia’s largest trading partner, but Australia’s growing security ties with the U.S. has added complexity to its relationship with Beijing
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SYDNEY—China will lift a ban on Australian rock lobster imports by the end of the year, Australia’s prime minister said Thursday, as ties between the two major trading partners continue to stabilise.
The announcement, following months of speculation, comes after China previously lifted trade barriers on various other Australian goods including barley, wine and beef. Beijing imposed the restrictions in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, during a diplomatic spat with Australia’s previous government.
Many of Australia’s live lobsters were sent to China prior to the ban, which sent prices spiralling downward.
“With our patient, calibrated and deliberate approach, we’ve restored Australian trade with our largest export market,” Australian Prime Minster Anthony Albanese said Thursday after meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang alongside an Asean summit in Laos. “We’ve worked for the removal of trade impediments one by one.”
Albanese said the lifting of the ban would support Australian jobs, and noted the ban will be lifted in time for Lunar New Year in early 2025.
China is Australia’s largest trading partner, but Australia’s growing security ties with the U.S. has added complexity to its relationship with Beijing. Ahead of the meeting with Li, Albanese said his message would be that “we’ll cooperate where we can, we’ll disagree where we must.”
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