ASX set to dip, Wall Street steady; Tesla falls

4 days ago 4

By Stan Choe

October 3, 2025 — 5.27am

US stocks are drifting around their records on Thursday as technology stocks keep rising and as Wall Street keeps ignoring the shutdown of the US government.

The S&P 500 rose 0.1 per cent, coming off its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones rose 68 points, or 0.2 per cent, in mid-afternoon trade, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3 per cent higher and hovering above its own record.

Wall Street was driven higher by tech stocks.

The Australian sharemarket is set to dip with futures pointing to a loss of 5 points, or 0.1 per cent, at the open. The ASX jumped 1.1 per cent on Thursday. The Australian dollar was fetching US65.99¢ at 5.22am AEST.

Thursdays on Wall Street typically mean investors are reacting to the latest weekly tally of US workers applying for unemployment benefits. But DC’s shutdown means this week’s report on jobless claims has been delayed. An even more consequential report, Friday’s monthly tally of jobs created and destroyed across the economy, will likely also not arrive on schedule.

That increases uncertainty when much on Wall Street is riding on investors’ hopes that the job market will slow by a precise amount: enough to convince the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates, but not by so much that it leads to a recession.

“The Fed has been on record that they are very data dependent and the lack of data from public sources is likely to be problematic,” said Brian Rehling, head of global fixed-income strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

So far, the US stock market has looked past the delays of such data. Shutdowns of the US government have tended not to hurt the economy or stock market much, and the thinking is that this one could be similar, even if President Donald Trump has threatened large-scale firings of federal workers this time around.

That left corporate announcements as the main drivers of trading Thursday.

Stocks in the chip and artificial-intelligence industries climbed after OpenAI announced partnerships with South Korean companies for Stargate, a $US500 billion ($758 billion) project aimed at building AI infrastructure.

Samsung Electronics rose 3.5 per cent in Seoul, and SK Hynix jumped 9.9 per cent.

The announcement also sent ripples around the world. On Wall Street, Advanced Micro Devices climbed 3.7 per cent, and Broadcom gained 2.2 per cent. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a major maker of chips, saw its stock that trades in the United States slip 0.3 per cent.

Excitement around AI and the massive spending underway because of it has been a major reason the US stock market has hit record after record, along with hopes for easier interest rates. But AI stocks have become so dominant, and so much money has poured into the industry that worries are rising about a potential bubble that could eventually lead to disappointment for investors.

Occidental Petroleum fell 7.8 per cent after it agreed to sell its chemical business, OxyChem, to Berkshire Hathaway for $US9.7 billion in cash. It could be the final big purchase for Berkshire Hathaway with famed investor Warren Buffett as its CEO.

Fair Isaac jumped 20.7 per cent after announcing a program that will allow mortgage lenders to access and distribute FICO credit scores directly to their customers, cutting out such big credit bureaus as TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.

TransUnion’s stock tumbled 9.5 per cent, while Equifax slid 7.7 per cent. The stock of the United Kingdom’s Experian fell 3.6 per cent in London.

London’s FTSE 100 edged down by 0.2 per cent, but indexes were much stronger across Europe and Asia. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.7 per cent for one of the biggest gains following the big jumps for Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury ticked down to 4.09 per cent from 4.12 per cent late on Wednesday.