Morning Wrap: Mixed session on Wall Street to provide no relief for Aussie market slide

In a nutshell:

• Dow ends lower, S&P 500 and Nasdaq eke out gains

• Investors get rattled by more tariff threats from President Trump

• Kerry is currently on leave and will return in the second week of March. Chris Conway is in the driver's seat until then

Let's dive in.

S&P 500 SESSION CHART

S&P 500 flat, finished off worst levels (Source: TradingView)

OVERNIGHT MARKETS

• Major US benchmarks finished mixed, with the Dow down 0.4%, whilst the S&P and Nasdaq eked out modest gains

• Stock pickers holding their smallest allocations of megacap names, boosting their funds' performance (Bloomberg)

• Traders betting on bond market rally as growth concerns rise (Bloomberg)

• Leveraged bets on speculative plays deal huge losses over past three sessions (Bloomberg)

• Yen drops to strongest level in four months on risk-off move, BoJ rate hike expectations ( Bloomberg)

STOCKS

• Nvidia sales grow 78% on AI demand, beats estimates and gives strong guidance

• General Motors (GM): shares jumped 5% after the car maker said it would raise its quarterly dividend by 25%, to 15 cents per share.

• Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD): shares of the world’s largest brewer surged about 9% following a fourth-quarter earnings and revenue beat. 

• Lowe’s (LOW): Home improvement retailer popped 3% on better-than-expected fourth-quarter results.

• Intuit (INTU): the tax software provider surged 12% as earnings for the fiscal second quarter impressed Wall Street.

• Meta discusses $200B AI data center project (Reuters)

• Amazon looking to savings from automation to help drive AI spending boom (FT)

• AI data centre boom a job-creation bust, needing very few workers in very large spaces (WSJ)

• Tech giants have pledged over $1T in US investment so far (Bloomberg)

• DeepSeek likely to release next-generation R2 model before May (Reuters); cuts off-peak pricing by up to 75% (Bloomberg)

• BP to raise oil and gas spending to $10B a year in pivot away from green goals, cuts buyback (Bloomberg)

• Trump tariff warning tests the resolve of European regulators who have Apple and Meta in sight (Bloomberg)

GEOPOLITICS & TRADE

• Trump orders probe into US copper imports that paves way for potential tariffs (FT)

• Trump takes aim at Chinese ships arriving at US ports, threatening to increase costs for imports (NY Times)

• Ukraine agrees to terms for a minerals deal with the US after demand for $500B in revenue is dropped (Washington Post, NY Times)

• Trump welcomes likely Zelensky visit to Washington this week to sign minerals agreement (Politico, Bloomberg)

• EU unveils plan to boost defence spending and capabilities (Politico); seek to placate Trump (Bloomberg)

ECONOMY

• US consumer confidence falls by most since August 2021 amid tariff worries, inflation expectations surge (Reuters)

• GfK survey shows German consumer confidence weakens in February (Reuters)

• Australian monthly inflation unchanged, but underlying measure ticks higher (Bloomberg)

ASX TODAY

• Qatar receives Australian government approval to acquire 25% stake in Virgin Australia - Australian Financial Review

• Carnarvon Energy reports H1 NPAT A$6.9M vs year-ago (A$4.0M)

• Vault Minerals reports H1 NPAT A$119.3M vs year-ago A$29.0M

• Catalyst Metals reports Q2 NPAT A$46.3M vs year-ago (A$6.8M)

• Boss Energy reports H1 NPAT (A$9.5M) vs year-ago A$57.6M

• Paragon Care reports H1 NPAT excluding PPA A$16.1M vs year-ago A$7.1M

• IDP Education reports H1 adjusted NPAT A$58.3M vs StreetAccount A$68.1M

• McMillan Shakespeare reports H1 normalised UNPATA A$49.6M vs StreetAccount A$45.8M

• Ramsay Health Care reports H1 NPAT A$158.9M ex-items vs StreetAccount A$149.8M

• Medibank Private reports H1 underlying NPAT A$298.7M vs StreetAccount A$283.6M

• Atlas Arteria reports FY proportionate EBITDA A$1.38B vs StreetAccount A$1.37B

• Coles Group reports H1 EBIT A$1.08B vs StreetAccount A$1.07B

• Coles Group chair James Graham to retire, effective 30-Apr

• Qantas Airways reports H1 PBT A$1.39B vs StreetAccount A$1.40B

WHAT TO WATCH TODAY

• Another mixed session on Wall Street, hardly setting the tone for the Aussie market to bounce today - it's down 7 out of the past 8 sessions.

• Results season is starting to wind down, with most of the majors having already reported. Coles reports this morning, but the remainder of the season is largely made up of mid and small-cap companies.

• Gold continued its rally overnight, up 0.4%, whilst the AUDUSD was weaker - good for the Aussie dollar gold price.

BROKER MOVES

• Latitude Group Holdings upgraded to equal-weight from underweight at Morgan Stanley

• Flight Centre upgraded to add from hold at Morgans

• Smartgroup downgraded to hold from add at Morgans

• Bapcor upgraded to add from hold at Morgans

• Integral Diagnostics upgraded to buy from hold at Canaccord Genuity

• Tyro Payments upgraded to overweight from market-weight at Wilsons

Key events 

Stocks trading ex-dividend: 

• Thu 27 Feb: Beach Energy (BPT) – $0.03, Ebos Group (EBO) – $0.454, Ignite (IGN) – $0.035, Jumbo Interactive (JIN) – $0.24, KKR Credit Income Fund (KKC) – $0.017, Nickel Industries (NIC) – $0.015, Perpetual Credit Income Trust (PCI) – $0.007, Pro Medicus (PME) – $0.25, Shape Australia Corporation (SHA) – $0.10, Stanmore Resources (SMR) – $0.105, Ventia Services Group (VNT) – $0.106, Whitehaven Coal (WHC) – $0.09.

• Fri 28 Feb: AMP (AMP) – $0.01, Australian United Investment Company (AUI) – $0.17, Carlton Investments (CIN) – $0.45, Centrepoint Alliance (CAF) – $0.013, Codan (CDA) – $0.125, Corporate Travel Management (CTD) – $0.10, Dalrymple Bay Infrastructure (DBI) – $0.056, Diversified United Investment (DUI) – $0.07, Ebos Group (EBO) – $0.454, Embark Early Education (EVO) – $0.015, Fiducian Group (FID) – $0.219, Ingenia Communities Group (INA) – $0.052, Johns Lyng Group (JLG) – $0.025, Orora (ORA) – $0.05, Pengana International Equities (PIA) – $0.014, Prime Financial Group (PFG) – $0.008.

• Monday 3 March: Alcoa Corporation (AAI) – $0.11, Aurizon (AZJ) – $0.092, Bell Financial Group (BFG) – $0.04, Big River Industries (BRI) – $0.02, Domino's Pizza Enterprises (DMP) – $0.555, Eureka Group (EGH) – $0.007, FSA Group (FSA) – $0.035, Newmont Corporation (NEM) – $0.275, Propel Funeral Partners (PFP) – $0.074, Redox (RDX) – $0.06, Steadfast Group (SDF) – $0.078.

Other ASX corporate actions today: 

• Dividends paid: Centuria Capital Group (CNI), Mirvac Group (MGR), Waypoint REIT (WPR)

• Listing: Stormeur Ltd (3 March), Dominion Income Trust (4 March), MA Credit Income Trust (5 March)

• Earnings: ARN Media (A1N), Atlas Arteria (ALX), Austin Engineering (ANG), Eagers Automotive (APE), Anteris Technologies Global Corp. (AVR), BlueBet Holdings (BBT), Cromwell Property Group REIT (CMW), Coles Group (COL), Clinuvel Pharmaceuticals (CUV), Clearview Wealth (CVW), Dicker Data (DDR), Horizon Oil (HZN), Harvey Norman Holdings (HVN), IDP Education (IEL), Imricor Medical Systems (IMR), Karoon Energy (KAR), Metro Mining (MMI), McMillan Shakespeare (MMS), Medibank Private (MPL), Monash IVF Group (MVF), Novonix (NVX), Omni Bridgeway (OBL), Objective Corporation (OCL), Paragon Care (PGC), Pepper Money (PPM), Perpetual (PPT), Pacific Smiles Group (PSQ), PYC Therapeutics (PYC), Qantas Airways (QAN), Ramsay Health Care (RHC), Strike Energy (STX), Waypoint REIT (WPR).

• AGMs: None

Economic calendar (AEDT):

No major economic news.