Markets rebound from Trump's tariff announcements, AUD remains steady

Share markets rebounded as investors switched from worrying about tariffs to anticipating rate cuts, while the Aussie dollar remained steady.

Transcript

00:00Today's big winner was Electro-Optic Systems, a little Aussie tech business that announced

00:07a $125 million order today for lasers that shoot down drones from a European member of

00:13NATO.

00:14And the shares absolutely took off.

00:16Elsewhere, big gains by banks and retailers in particular produced a solid general rise,

00:21which followed a similar gain in New York, as investors stopped worrying about weak employment

00:25and tariffs of 20 per cent, and focused instead on all the money that tech companies are going

00:29to make from AI, they hope.

00:33On the subject of US employment, demand for Labor is falling as the economy slows, but

00:37the supply of Labor is falling too, because arrivals of illegal migrants has collapsed to

00:42near zero, as promised by Donald Trump.

00:45It's also true that births are declining and deaths are rising, apart from that big rise

00:50and fall during and after the pandemic, all of which means America's population is falling

00:55fast.

00:56The oil price fell again, because OPEC said it would increase production in September,

01:00while iron ore jumped 2.3 per cent, and the Aussie dollar went sideways, staying in the

01:05mid-64s.

01:06Finally, NAB released its Quarterly Wellbeing Index today.

01:11Now, this is an entirely subjective series where they asked a bunch of Australians how they

01:16feel.

01:17In the June quarter, the answer was feeling better, but still below average.

01:21They also asked about working from home, how much of it they're doing, what they think

01:26it will be, and what they'd like it to be.

01:28Well, it's currently 30 per cent of the time, and they expect it to be 36 per cent in a year's

01:33time, but they'd like it to be almost half the time.

01:37That's finance.

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