Super Retail Group, which owns the Rebel Sport and Supercheap Auto chains, rose 0.9 per cent, bouncing back a little from its 4.3 per cent loss on Tuesday when it sacked its chief executive, Anthony Heraghty, for misleading the board about an alleged relationship that has plunged the company into the middle of a messy multimillion-dollar legal battle.
On Wall Street overnight, US stocks edged back as investors awaited what Wall Street expects will be the first cut of the year to interest rates by the Fed.
The S&P 500 fell 0.1 per cent from its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones dipped 125 points, or 0.3 per cent, while the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1 per cent from its own record set the day before.
The US and China have reached an agreement on TikTok.Credit: AP
Stocks have run to records on expectations that the Fed will announce the first of a series of cuts to rates on Wednesday in hopes of giving the economy a boost. The job market has slowed so much that traders believe Fed officials now see it as the bigger danger for the economy than the threat of higher inflation because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Trump on Tuesday announced an agreement between the US and China to keep TikTok operating in the US, potentially resolving a saga that has lingered for nearly a year.
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“We have a deal on TikTok… We have a group of very big companies that want to buy it,” Trump said at a White House briefing, without providing further details. The announcement comes a day before a September 17 deadline to sell or shut down the short video app.
The Fed has been holding off on cuts to rates because inflation has remained above its 2 per cent target, and easier interest rates could give it more fuel.
A report on Tuesday said shoppers increased their spending at US retailers by more last month than economists expected. The data did little to change traders’ expectations for rate cut on Wednesday, followed by more through the end of the year and into 2026.
Such high expectations have sent stocks to records, but they can also create disappointment if unfulfilled. That’s why more attention will be on what Fed Chair Jerome Powell says about the possibility of upcoming cuts after the decision than on the decision itself.
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Fed officials will also release their latest projections for where they see interest rates and the economy heading in upcoming years.
New York Times shares fell 1.6 per cent after Trump filed a $US15 billion ($22.5 billion) defamation lawsuit against the newspaper and four of its journalists on Monday. The lawsuit points to several articles and a book written by Times journalists and published in the lead up to the 2024 election as “part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump.”
In other international markets, indexes fell in Europe following a mixed showing in Asia.