It is Friday the 4th of July 2025. There is a growing debate among investors about the timing of the big switch on the ASX, rotating away from the big banks and into the big miners. Investors say there will be a catalyst to change sentiment, and that could occur at any point. Bank stocks jumped 26 per cent in the 12 months through June, helped by a 45 per cent rally in Commonwealth Bank's share price as superannuation giants, passive funds and offshore managers bought into the stock. The resources index, in contrast, dropped eight per cent as the mining behemoths were hit by ongoing weakness in China’s property market and the iron ore price.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is “keen” to reschedule a meeting between Donald Trump and Anthony Albanese. She said Trump is a “very, very busy man” but Rubio made it clear to her they wanted a meeting.
Almost 120 employees in Microsoft’s Australian operations will lose their jobs as part of a global cull of 9,000 staff. It is the second redundancy round to hit the company in two months.
The country’s corporate regulator said major financial services firms including Macquarie, AMP and Colonial First State need to do more to ensure that retirement savers are protected from complex, high-risk schemes hosted on their superannuation platforms.
Eileen Bond, the former wife of late West Australian businessman Alan Bond, has died at the age of 87, after a medical episode over the weekend.
Tesla is headed for another year of shrinking sales after it posted a second straight drop in quarterly deliveries, dragged down by CEO Elon Musk's right-wing political stances and an ageing vehicle line-up that has turned off some buyers. The automaker now needs to deliver over one million vehicles in the typically strong second half to avoid another annual sales decline.
Fear-o-meter
The big switch is coming. At some point in the future, big investors will rotate from banks to resource companies and the Australian miners will out-perform the Australian financials. It hasn’t happened for a while, thanks to the Commonwealth Bank-led run by the financial index.
Commonwealth Bank is the focus of discussions. Its share of the S&P/ASX 200 has jumped over the past year from nine per cent to just shy of 12 per cent. CBA’s success has meant that fund managers who avoided buying the stock, or held a smaller weighting than the benchmark index, generally have underperformed.
But change is coming.
A renewed push by Beijing to tackle China’s deflationary spiral has pushed up iron ore prices and the local miners. That sent BHP, Fortescue Metals and Rio Tinto’s share prices higher yesterday. In contrast, the big banks lost ground.
It might not be the long-awaited catalyst to trigger the big switch on the ASX from banks, into miners, but it is an example of what the catalyst could look like.
Who's talking today?
On the evolving cyber risk facing Australian businesses right now, and why communication is key to protecting companies:
"When I talk to Chief Information Security Officers... the number one challenge is still getting budget. They're struggling to convince the exec and boards to give them budget. And I think the reason for that is we're not showing them the risk quantification in the way we have to show them.
So you typically go and say, "Hey, I want to buy this amazing tool that is going to do these five functions for us", which is not talking about the business language, right? So we are talking about technical stuff with non-technical people.
And the question you're often going to receive from your CFO or your board is "Okay, so you're going to spend a million dollar buying this tool. Are we going to be five times safer, or two times safer? So to answer that question, that's where you need to bring everyone on a journey. My recommendation is you need to start with what we call it 'value at risk'. What does your business stand to lose if that particular machine is interrupted?"
Australia's love of utes shows no signs of abating, with the top four vehicles sold in June all at home on a construction site. And an electric ute - the BYD Shark 6 - makes a strong showing, coming in at number four. SUVs round out the list, but there's not a sedan or hatchback to be seen, with passenger vehicle sales down almost 28pc year on year.
