ASX gives up big early gains to end marginally higher as banks and retailers dumped

The Australian share market hit a new record high on Monday morning, but then tumbled to finish only slightly higher on the day.

Transcript

00:00Well, the market was gout, gout out of the blocks this morning, surging 1% before investors

00:07decided to cash in some wins and sell.

00:09Here's why the market got off to that start this morning.

00:13Because the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said these words in his speech

00:17at the Jackson Hole Symposium, as it's called, on Friday morning, Wyoming time.

00:22With policy in restrictive territory, the baseline outlook and the shifting balance

00:26of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance.

00:30Now whenever markets see the word may in a central banker's speech, they substitute will

00:35for it, and immediately started shouting buy into their phones, sending all the US indexes

00:39higher, which also translated into some solid gains in Asia today.

00:44Local market also finished higher, only just, with mining stocks making the biggest gains

00:49and banks and retailers going backwards.

00:52There's a week to go of the reporting season, and 65% of companies that have reported so

00:57far have reported higher earnings and dividends, which is nice.

01:01But the problem is that only 27% of them beat expectations, and as we know, the share market

01:06is a machine for measuring expectations, not reality.

01:11Gold and iron ore rose fairly strongly over the weekend because the US dollar fell after

01:15Powell's speech, and the Aussie dollar rose for the same reason.

01:20The Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research has done some work on

01:23CEO salaries, and produced this rather interesting graph.

01:28It compares what most people think the ratio of CEO wages to everyone else is, what they'd

01:33like it to be, and what it actually is.

01:37And well, we've all got no idea how much the bosses get.

01:41And that's finance.

01:42And that's finance.