The Monday Report – 15 September 2025

This story features ANZ GROUP HOLDINGS LIMITED, and other companies. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: ANZ

The company is included in ASX20, ASX50, ASX100, ASX200, ASX300 and ALL-ORDS

US markets ended mixed on Friday with Nasdaq rallying and the S&P500 and Dow Jones in the red. 

After a positive day last Friday and a flat weekly performance, ASX futures are pointing to a weak start.

Good Morning,

Australian Market Rundown, Tony Scyamore IG extract

The ASX200 finished 6 points (-0.07%) lower last week at 8864, continuing to consolidate gains after its impressive run of record highs in August. 

The worst-performing sectors last week were Energy down -4.45%, Industrials off -1.26%, Consumer Discretionary down -1.07%, and Health Care off -0.81%. In contrast, the IT sector rose 2.70%, Real Estate lifted 1.88%, Utilities up 0.57%, and Financial up 0.40%. These sectors outperformed the broader market.

The key event on the economic calendar this week is Thursday’s Labour Force report for August. Last month (July), employment in Australia increased by 24,500 jobs, in line with the expected 25,000 gain. The unemployment rate eased to 4.2% from 4.3% previously, while the participation rate remained steady at 67%.

The solid employment report validated the RBA’s cautious approach to rate cuts and reinforced expectations it will remain a cautious cutter, given concerns about a tight labour market and upward pressure on wages.

The preliminary expectation for August is the Australian economy will add 25,000 jobs and the unemployment rate will remain at 4.2%. If the numbers align with these expectations, the RBA is likely to cut rates by -25bp in November, bringing the cash rate back to 3.35%.

The Australian interest rate market begins the week with -20bp of a -25bp rate cut priced for November. After that, another -25bp rate cut from the RBA is price for May 2026. 

Navigating the deluge of macro risk, Chris Weston, Pepperstone extract

We look ahead to what will be a packed week of macro event risk, with Wednesday’s FOMC meeting the clear highlight. The market would be surprised if we saw any outcome other than a -25bp cut from the Fed, even if several Fed governors do vote for a -50bp cut (depending on Steven Miran’s appointment passing a Senate vote). 

A -25bp cut is the default position held by the large majority of market players, and it’s only if enough voting members felt the need to front-load cuts could an outsized -50bp cut play out. There will be some focus on liquidity and the longevity of the Fed’s QT program, although deeper colour may not come until the minutes are released on 8 October.

The new set of ‘Dots’ will be closely watched. The median dot is likely to remain at 3.875% for this year, indicating a central case for one more cut, but there is a risk it is taken down to 3.625% which would be in line with market pricing and expectations. 

We may also see one more -25bp cut added to the 2026 ‘dot,’ with the central view being the fed funds rate is taken to 3.375%, even if estimates for core PCE inflation are pulled modestly higher to 2.5% (from 2.4%).

Given the recent rally in USTs and the pricing in U.S. interest rate swaps, it seems a tall order for the Fed to deliver a dovish surprise to markets. This tilts the risk towards a sell-off in rates and potentially USD upside.

Whether that spills over into increased selling of equity is debatable, as the Fed should maintain a strong appetite to ease again in October, which could bring out intraday dip buyers and help contain any downside

A little over four hours before the FOMC meeting, the Bank of Canada (BoC) meets and looks set to get the rate-cut party started. After poor employment reports in July and August, market pricing in CAD swaps implies an 84% probability the BoC will cut rates.

The Norges Bank (meeting 18 Sept) may also lower rates, although that is a closer call — NOK interest rate swaps imply a 60% probability of a cut, while most economists also forecast a cut. 

In the session ahead, U.S. corporations will make their estimated quarterly tax payments to the IRS. These payments are debited from companies’ deposits at commercial banks (e.g., JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi). The Fed then reduces the banks’ reserve balances (which currently earn 4.40% risk-free) by the same amount and credits the Treasury General Account (TGA).

Quick takes, Ed Yardeni, Yardeni Research extract

Last Wednesday, Larry Ellison, the executive chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle, saw his net worth jump by US$101 billion, the biggest one-day increase ever recorded on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, to US$382 billion.

That happened after the company announced at its quarterly earnings conference that Google’s Gemini AI models would become available on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure. That sent the company’s stock soaring by 40%.

In the August 10 Quick Takes, we wrote: “The sky seems to be the limit for the cloud providers. More and more of us are using AI’s large language models, such as Gemini, GROK, ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot, as tools to conduct research, write software, create content, and work more productively.

“These AI tools are all processing and storing our interactions with them in the cloud and learning from these interactions to become more useful to us. As the tools become more useful, the cloud companies earn more, and they must spend more to expand their data center capacity.

“Our collective ability to process more data leads us all to create more data to process. And so on. So the sky really is the limit!”

Also having a good move to the upside last week was the S&P500 Investment Banking & Brokerage stock price index. It has been rising into record-high territory in recent weeks. We’ve recommended overweighting the S&P500 Financials since the start of the current bull market in October 2022.

We’ve done the same for the Information Technology, Communication Services, and Industrials sectors of the S&P500. So far, so good.

We are now in the sweet spot of the bull market, in which Financials benefit from increasing M&A and IPO activity triggered by rising stock prices. It’s similar to the sky-is-the-limit story for the cloud companies above.

Higher stock prices lead to more investment banking activity, which in turn drives the stock prices of Financials higher. In both cases, the result could eventually be a speculative bubble that bursts.

For now, we reckon that we are in the fourth inning of a cyclical investment banking boom.

As for the S&P500, the bull market remains sustainably fueled by rising record forward earnings per share. It rose to US$293.97 last week and is on track to exceed US$300 by the end of the year as it converges with the analysts’ consensus estimate for 2026, which has increased to US$304.59 and looks likely to continue to rise. The forward P/E has stabilized around 22.0 in recent weeks.

Truly remarkable is that the forward profit margin of the S&P500 has continued to rise to record highs. It is currently 13.9% despite higher tariff costs and labor shortages. This confirms our upbeat outlook for productivity growth.

Meanwhile, the bull-bear ratios remain relatively neutral. There aren’t too many bulls, so there should be more upside for the stock market on a sentiment basis.

Last Thursday, economists lost some more of their confidence in the labor market when initial unemployment claims jumped 27,000 to 263,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis.

We observed the increase was attributable to an unusual 15,304 spike in Texas on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. Seasonally adjusted, it was up 16,900.

That might be a one-time aberration, or else oil-field employment may be starting to fall along with the rig count

Corporate news in Australia

-ANZ Bank ((ANZ)) has agreed to pay a $240m penalty after admitting to engaging in unconscionable conduct

-US based Cerberus is offloading its investment in land lease communities’ operator Lincoln Place for $800m-$1bn including a possible ASX listing.

-ASIC and the ASX ((ASX)) are in discussions with e-commerce software company Rokt (circa $7bn valuation) about a dual Nasdaq and ASX listing under a single prospectus which has never been done before.

-Macquarie Group ((MQG)) has frozen new super flows into Metrics funds after governance concerns and a downgrade from Lonsec.

-Advance Innergy has lowered its ASX IPO to $150m post investor feedback.

-Live Nation looks set to win Sydney’s largest ticketing contract from Ticketek.

On the calendar today:

-JP Public Holiday

-CH Aug Industrial production

-CH Aug Retail sales

-CH Aug Unemployment

-EZ July Trade Bal

-ALFABS AUSTRALIA LIMITED ((AAL)) ex-div 1.70c (100%)

-CREDIT CORP GROUP LIMITED ((CCP)) ex-div 36.00c (100%)

-CHORUS LIMITED ((CNU)) ex-div 26.43c

-DATA#3 LIMITED. ((DTL)) ex-div 15.00c (100%)

-ENERO GROUP LIMITED ((EGG)) ex-div 1.30c (100%)

-EUROZ HARTLEYS GROUP LIMITED ((EZL)) ex-div 3.50c (100%)

-FLEETWOOD LIMITED ((FWD)) ex-div 13.50c (100%)

-GUZMAN Y GOMEZ LIMITED ((GYG)) ex-div 12.60c (100%)

-KELSIAN GROUP LIMITED ((KLS)) ex-div 9.50c (100%)

-LOVISA HOLDINGS LIMITED ((LOV)) ex-div 27.00c

-QUBE HOLDINGS LIMITED ((QUB)) ex-div 5.70c (100%)

-RAMELIUS RESOURCES LIMITED ((RMS)) ex-div 5.00c (100%)

-SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT GROUP LIMITED ((SEG)) ex-div 1.00c (100%)

-SAUNDERS INTERNATIONAL LIMITED ((SND)) ex-div 0.25c (100%)

FNArena’s four-weekly calendar: https://fnarena.com/index.php/financial-news/calendar/

The Australian share market over the past thirty days…

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