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By Staff writers
November 4, 2025 — 6.51am
The Australian sharemarket is set to open lower on Melbourne Cup Day as investors await the Reserve Bank’s interest rate decision and outlook for future rate cuts in the afternoon.
ASX futures were down 11 points, or 0.1 per cent, at 8892 as of 6.31am AEDT. The local bourse edged up 0.2 per cent on Monday after bank shares climbed, as Westpac kicked off a round of profit reports from the sector . The Australian dollar was trading US65.39¢ at 6.49am.
The RBA will announce its rate decision at 2.30pm AEDT, with the central bank widely expected to keep rates on hold after a surprise jump in inflation that was revealed last week. The focus will be on the policy statement when it announces the decision and governor Michele Bullock’s comments in a press briefing from 3.30pm AEDT as investors are trying to gauge where rates are headed over the coming months.
Investor focus will be on the Reserve Bank’s outlook for interest rates.Credit: Louie Douvis
Westpac boss Anthony Miller said on Monday borrowers will probably have to wait until May for more interest rate relief as the RBA grapples with the twin challenges of higher inflation and rising unemployment alongside an acceleration in house prices.
Rate cuts tend to boost share prices as they lower borrowing costs for companies and consumers, leaving people with more money to spend.
Iren’s ASX-listed shares are set to gain after the Sydney-based data centre operator landed a $US9.7 billion ($14.8 billion) deal to provide AI computing capacity to Microsoft. The US tech giant fell 0.2 per cent in New York trading after announcing the deal with Iren, which will give it access to some of Nvidia’s chips as it seeks to keep up with AI demand. Iren’s Nasdaq shares jumped 8.8 per cent.
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More gains for Nvidia, Amazon and other AI superstars were propping up Wall Street overnight, even as most other stocks fell.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3 per cent in afternoon trading and was holding near its all-time high set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.4 per cent as of 6.01am AEDT, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6 per cent higher. Share price losses were widespread, and two out of every three stocks within the S&P 500 fell.
Kimberly-Clark led the way with a drop of 13.7 per cent after it said it would buy Kenvue in a deal valuing it at $US48.7 billion. Kenvue, which sells Tylenol, Band-Aids and Listerine, jumped 14.1 per cent.
Beyond Meat tumbled 11 per cent after the plant-based meat company delayed its report for the latest quarter’s results to November 11 to assess how big of a non-cash charge it will take against its earnings due to issues it had previously disclosed with some of its assets.
Beyond Meat’s stock has been mostly falling since topping $US4 in July, but it went on a wild ride last month where it suddenly soared from US52¢ to $US3.62 in three days, a nearly 600 per cent surge. It got swept up in the “meme stock” craze, where prices can rise solely due to online hype rather than any change to the company’s actual business.
A much longer-lasting frenzy on Wall Street has been the furore around artificial-intelligence technology, which proponents say is in the midst of changing the world.
Nvidia was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500 overnight, much like it has been for the year so far. The chip company rose 3.3 per cent to bring its gain for the year to date to 55 per cent.
Amazon rallied 4.4 per cent after announcing a $US38 billion agreement with OpenAI, which will use Amazon’s cloud computing services to run its AI workloads.
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Palantir Technologies, which came into the day with a stunning 165 per cent gain for the year so far, rose another 3.3 per cent. Traders were pushing up the AI darling in the final hours before the data platform company was due to report its latest quarterly results.
Companies across the US stock market will need to hit expectations to justify the big gains for their stock prices since hitting a low in April. Criticism has been rising that the broad US market, and AI stocks in particular, have become too expensive and could be inflating into a dangerous bubble similar to the 2000 dot-com bust.
For the most part, companies have been meeting high expectations. Four out of every five companies in the S&P 500 that have delivered their results for the latest quarter so far have topped analysts’ forecasts, according to FactSet. With the reporting season roughly two-thirds done, companies in the S&P 500 are on track to deliver growth of nearly 11% per cent from a year earlier.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.11 per cent, where it was late on Friday.
It recovered from an earlier stumble following a discouraging report on US manufacturers. Activity for them shrank by more last month than economists expected, with several telling surveyors for the Institute for Supply Management that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are creating financial pain.
“Wonder has turned to concern regarding how the tariff threats are affecting our business,” a chemical products manufacturer told the survey. “Orders are down across most divisions, and we’ve lowered our financial expectations for 2025.”
“In general, business is really strained,” another manufacturer told the survey.
In other international markets, indexes were mixed in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia.
South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.8 per cent to another record. SK Hynix soared nearly 11 per cent, helped by recent moves to team up with Nvidia in developing the country’s AI infrastructure and capabilities. South Korean shipbuilders also logged gains after China said it would cancel added port fees on US-invested or US-flagged vessels after Trump met last week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
with AP
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