The materials index, including the big miners and the gold companies, has been easily the best performing sector on the ASX over the last year, while healthcare and the tech indices were the worst. It is a total turnaround from last year when miners outside gold could find very few friends, while tech stocks could find very few enemies. Over the past year, the materials index on the ASX, which includes the miners, is up 21 per cent. The tech index is down 21 per cent and healthcare is off 22 per cent, in large part due to CSL’s demise. Financials, driven by the big banks, have had a lacklustre year, with that index flat. The best performers have been the gold stocks – Regis Resources, Resolute Mining, Genesis Minerals, and Evolution Mining.
The housing auction market has been given a dose of higher interest rates, with the preliminary auction clearance rate over the past week falling to its lowest point in a year.
The energy market regulator says households should pay lower electricity prices between 2025 and 2030, if the energy transition continues along the government’s planned path.
Communications Minister Anika Wells is under pressure over her use of public funds to take trips locally and abroad, but insists she was working hard on all the trips. PM Anthony Albanese has been forced to defend her travel expenses.
The Defence Department has urged the public to stay alert to unexploded ordnance devices, some of which will date back to WWII.
Netflix is set to buy Warner Bros in an $US83 billion deal, beating out Comcast and Paramount and demonstrating just how much Hollywood and big tech are merging.
Fear-o-meter
Far and away the best performing sector over the past year has been gold stocks. Eight of the top ten performers so far this year are gold, or gold related, companies and they have benefited from record gold prices.
Away from gold, some of the better-known companies to have a great year includes Harvey Norman, up 50 per cent, Challenger, up 48pc, Telstra, up 22pc, and Transurban Group, up 15pc.
The flip side – the worst performing stocks – are even more interesting. The six worst performers, in order are plumbing group Reece, Treasury Wine Estates, Guzman y Gomez, James Hardie, Premier Investments and Wisetech Global.
The worst 25 includes Domino’s, CSL, REA, Bendigo and Adelaide, Flight Centre and Goodman Group. I can’t remember a year when so many brand-name stocks have done so poorly.
Fear & Greed Q+A today
On the week ahead for the economy, including the RBA board meeting today and tomorrow:
“A month and a half ago the market had one-and-a-half to two rate cuts priced in by the middle of 2026. We now have one to one-and-a-bit rate hikes priced in. That’s not to say the market is wrong - markets react to news: the inflation number, better household spending, good compositional shifts in GDP, and what’s happening in Japan. The RBA will be fully aware of all of these trends. Yes, rates are on hold, but Michele Bullock will certainly be asked whether this better news means hikes are on the table. I think it’s still too early. One quarter of data is great, but it’s not definitive. She’ll go back to that line: not ruling anything in or out.”
It's the time of year where we find out what everyone's been reading, watching, listening to and doing for the last eleven months. Wikipedia has announced its most-visited pages for 2025, with a few surprises.
