ASX rises as gold miners rally, but Myer slumps on large loss

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A rally on Wall Street has sent Australian stocks higher, after chipmaker Nvidia said it would invest up to $US100 billion ($152 billion) in OpenAI. But Myer shares slumped after big write-downs drove a huge loss.

Transcript

00:00Well, the main reason for Myer's loss was that it had to write down the value of the

00:06clothing brands it bought six months ago from its biggest shareholder, Solomon Lu, by $213

00:12million, which was definitely not ideal. On top of that, Myer's new distribution centre

00:17in Melbourne has been a disaster. Apparently, the computer doesn't talk to the robots, which

00:22is also not ideal. Myer's shares had halved between the start of the year and last night

00:28and today that became two thirds. The rest of the market averted its eyes and went up thanks

00:34to 1% gains, roughly, by all the big bags. The AI semiconductor company NVIDIA has agreed

00:40to invest $100 billion US into the company that owns ChatGPT, OpenAI, which in turn says

00:47it will spend the same $100 billion on NVIDIA products. They could just keep doing that

00:52forever. And that money go round helped lift the US share market last night. But the maker

00:57of Tylenol, Kenview, fell 7.5% before President Trump linked paracetamol with autism. The company

01:05will have a worse headache tonight, I'd say. And meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel's employer, Disney,

01:10also fell after they said his show will be back on tonight. And the gold prices hit a new record

01:16high above US$3,700. The rise of gold since the start of last year, and especially this

01:23year, has been astonishing, fuelled by US rate cuts and Donald Trump doing what he said he

01:29would do, which is increase tariffs and cut immigration. A demand shock combined with a supply shock.

01:37Global investors see it as a bit like the combination of nitro and glycerin, and they're getting out

01:43of there before it blows. And finally, in all this mayhem, the Aussie dollar was an oasis of

01:49calm today, steady at 65.9 US cents. And that's finance.

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