The Monday Report – 10 August 2026

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This story features CAR GROUP LIMITED, and other companies.
For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: CAR
The company is included in ASX50, ASX100, ASX200, ASX300, ALL-ORDS and ALL-TECH

US markets closed higher on Friday, led by the Nasdaq, up 1.4%.

Last week the Australian market rose over 3%. ASX200 futures on Monday morning are pointing higher, ahead of the RBA's rate decision tomorrow.

Sentiment might be dampened by new Iranian demands on the US to open the Strait of Hormuz.

Good Morning,

The Australian market eased from record highs on Friday as investors weighed the prospects of a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The ASX200 fell -8pts or 0.1% to 9,264. Seven of 11 sectors closed in the red, led by financials, while miners were firmer.

Traders View, Tony Sycamore, IG extract

The ASX200 finished 286 points (3.19%) higher last week at 9263, after hitting a trifecta of record highs on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

The strong start to August was underpinned by cooler inflation numbers and a less hawkish tone from the RBA governor, which has proved a boon for the interest-rate sensitive ASX200.

A solid start to earnings season has provided additional support, as did last week’s stronger-than-expected household spending data, which lifted some of the doom and gloom around depressed consumer confidence and falling house prices.

The best performing sectors last week were the IT (up 8.40%), Materials (up 7.55%), Health Care (up 5.04%) and Industrials (up 2.77%) sectors. In contrast, the Energy (-1.97%), Utilities (-0.80%), Real Estate (up 1.18%) and Telco (up 1.35%) sectors underperformed the broader market.

Tuesday’s RBA board meeting will be the key economic event. At its June meeting, the Reserve Bank of Australia left the official cash rate unchanged at 4.35% in an unanimous decision. This followed three consecutive 25 basis point hikes earlier in the year that had taken the cash rate from 3.60% to 4.35%.

Since the June meeting, incoming data has generally been softer. The June CPI report, released in late July, showed annual headline inflation falling to 3.8% from 4.0% in May. The RBA’s preferred trimmed mean measure held steady at 3.6% year-on-year — a better outcome than feared.

This was preceded a day earlier by a speech from Governor Bullock that struck a somewhat less hawkish tone. She stopped short of describing the August meeting as genuinely live in the Q&A and acknowledged housing and employment weakness, as well as the already restrictive stance of policy.

These events have left markets pricing in a very high probability that the cash rate will remain at 4.35% on Tuesday. Attention will therefore focus on the accompanying statement and Governor Bullock’s press conference for any fresh guidance, which should retain a hawkish tone.

The Governor is likely to emphasise the persistence of above-target inflation. The accompanying forecasts are expected to show a modestly weaker near-term GDP growth profile, which should see the unemployment rate revised higher.

The RBA’s forecasts are likely to continue showing inflation not returning to the midpoint of the target band until 2028.

The Australian rates market starts the week pricing in just 1bp of tightening for next week’s RBA meeting, with a total of 15bp of hikes priced for the rest of 2026

August Reporting Season in Full Swing

With the August reporting season starting to ramp up, stay in touch with which companies are due to report with the the FNArena Calendar https://fnarena.com/index.php/financial-news/calendar/

Today’s scheduling includes Car Group ((CAR)), Contact Energy ((CEN)), Dexus Convenience Retail ((DXC)) and Westpac ((WBC)) releasing a 3Q26 trading update.

The FNArena corporate results monitor to track the earnings reports: https://fnarena.com/index.php/reporting_season/

Today’s Big Picture, J.L. Bernstein extract

The Jobs Report Argues With Itself

The economy shed -23,000 jobs in July against expectations for a gain of 83,000.

May and June were revised down by another -103,000 combined, so the labor market the Fed looked at last week was better on paper than in reality.

Unemployment still fell to 4.1 percent, because people stopped looking for work, not because they found it.

Michael Rosen at Angeles Investments said he has never seen this combination before, and that is the honest read.

The AI Trade Got Its Week Back

July’s worst names led all week.

Coherent and Lumentum, both of which took Nvidia money this year, clawed back most of last month’s damage, and chips carried the Nasdaq to its best week since spring.

Software helped too, after a run of earnings that undercut the idea AI is about to eat the industry. Six weeks of worry undone in five sessions.

Gold And Silver Ran Alongside Stocks

Gold is set for its best week since January and silver its best since February.

December gold traded as high as US$4,380.20 and September silver reached US$64.96.

UBS told clients it sees gold at US$5,000 an ounce in the first half of 2027.

Metals running while stocks make new highs usually means someone is hedging the dollar, not the economy.

ANZ Bank, Australian Morning Focus extract

Equity and bond markets rallied following July’s very soft US labour market report, as market expectations for Fed rate hikes in the near term were pared. 

The market now sees a hold in September as more likely than a hike. 

The S&P500 closed up 0.6%, while the Nasdaq rose 1.3%. 

In Europe, the EuroStoxx 50 and FTSE100 both rose 0.3%. 

The yield on the US 10yr Treasury note fell -3bp to 4.65%. 

In commodities, the active WTI future rose 1.2% to US$78.2/bbl. Gold rose 1.7% to US$4,341.6/oz. 

July’s US labour market report was not only very soft; historic revisions also revealed a much weaker labour market than previously thought. Hiring momentum has slowed sharply in recent months. 

Nonfarm payrolls fell -23k in July, well below the consensus of an 80k rise. Revisions to the prior two months subtracted a further -103k jobs.

The largest contributors to July’s fall in payrolls were leisure and hospitality (-40k), likely associated with the end of the FIFA World Cup, and local government education payrolls (-50k), which may reflect seasonal distortions. 

The unemployment rate fell -0.1ppt to 4.1%, but this reflected a shrinking labour force rather than labour market strength. 

The participation rate fell -0.1ppt to 61.4% (the lowest since 1976, excluding pandemic distortions), offsetting lower employment. Policymakers may still view the labour market as broadly balanced. 

In our view, the most important signal from Friday’s release was the sharp slowdown in wage growth. Growth in average hourly earnings fell -0.3ppt to 3.2% y/y. On a three-month annualised basis, it slowed to just 2.26%. 

The US labour market is a source of disinflationary pressure, even with the unemployment rate remaining very low.

July’s weak jobs report alone is unlikely to be sufficient for policymakers to reassess the balance of risks to the FOMC’s dual mandate, but the labour market is certainly not as solid as previously thought, and it is now more difficult to see the Fed hiking into a fragile labour market backdrop.

Nonetheless, forthcoming inflation data remains crucial. Policymakers have made it clear that further disinflation progress is needed for the Fed to remain on hold in the coming months.

We expect to see further progress on inflation in the coming months and for the Fed to remain on hold. These data have reinforced that view.

US Market Call: History lesson, Ed Yardeni & Toby Hearst, Yardeni Quicktakes extract

The S&P500 broke out of its summer range this week to yet another record high. The index closed at 7,757.64 on Friday, clearing the 7,500 level it had circled since May 14.

The index is 3.5% above its 50-day moving average and 9.8% above its 200-day moving average. Those are not extreme readings.

The breakout is a good moment to ask where this bull market fits in the historical record. The answer is that it’s in the middle. That is a more bullish finding than it sounds.

Bull markets do not die of old age or of accumulated gains. They usually die when earnings roll over.

The current bull market has been compared to the dot-com era’s meltup/meltdown scenario. If the late 1990s ended with a stock-market meltup, will the late 2020s do the same?

Back then, it was a FOMO-driven meltup; everyone feared being left out. This time, FEMO, or fabulous earnings momentum, is the driving force.

Here’s more:

(1) History. In the current bull market, the S&P500 is up 116.9% since it began on October 12, 2022. That ranks fifth of the eight bull markets since 1966. Investors who believe this market has run too far should look at what running too far can actually look like.

Overlay the current period starting in 2015 on 1985-2005, and the two paths track each other closely, with the current run at 276.8% since 2015. If the analog continues to hold, the market keeps climbing, and the interesting years are ahead rather than behind.

That brings us to the melt-up question. Valuation multiples are higher today than they were heading into the Tech Wreck of the late 1990s. So a meltup from here would more likely be an earnings-led meltup than a valuation-led meltup. It would be a FEMO one rather than a FOMO one.

(2) Performance. The S&P500 equal-weight and market-weight indexes both rose to record highs last week.

The Impressive 493 is up 16.0% ytd, compared with 13.3% for the S&P500 and 4.8% for the Mag-7. The Mag-7 has recovered ground since the hyperscalers reported, closing part of a performance gap that was much wider in June.

The Russell2000 also rose to a record high last week. SmallCaps do not lead when investors are positioning for a recession.

(3) Growth vs Value. The S&P500 Growth and S&P500 Value indexes both rose to new record highs last week.

The forward P/E of S&P500 Growth has fallen to 20.2, against 18.3 for Value. Investors who worry about a replay of the dot-com episode should note that Growth traded above 40.0 in 2000. The valuation case for that comparison has diminished considerably.

Note that Growth’s forward earnings have recently been boosted by mark-to-market (MTM) capital gains, thus lowering the forward P/E.

(4) Earnings. FEMO continues to drive the bull market. Forward earnings, currently at US$389.90 per share, are converging toward the analysts’ 2027 EPS consensus (currently at US$408.83) as this year progresses (they’ll match by the end of the year). The latter has continued to rise, and so has the 2026 consensus EPS estimate, which has been boosted over the past few weeks by MTM gains.

The 2026 quarterly picture is strong across the board, starting with 1Q’s 19.0% y/y. The actual/estimated blended growth rate for 2Q26 is a whopping 46.7%, up sharply in recent weeks. The current estimates for 3Q and 4Q are 22.6% and 27.0%.

The 2Q spike reflects the MTM gains we have flagged for two weeks running. 3Q and 4Q carry no such distortion and continue to rise.

The sectors tell the same story, with the same caveat. On a pro forma basis, 2Q growth for the S&P500 is 51.1%, with Communication Services and Consumer Discretionary both making big upside moves.

Alphabet’s MTM gains drive the former, and Amazon’s MTM gains drive the latter. Information Technology continues to climb firmly at 72.9% without the benefit of MTM gains. Energy and Health Care are the outliers at 142.7% and -6.8%.

(5) Sentiment. The Investors Intelligence bull-bear ratio spiked this week to 3.63, well above its 2.60 average. The AAII bull-bear ratio has not followed, at 0.98 against its own average of 1.19.

Institutional investors are bullish; retail investors, not so much.

Corporate news in Australia:

• NZME ((NZM)) acquires Stuff’s Petone print equipment for up to $15m to lower costs and improve print profitability
• Connected Minerals ((CML)) completes the acquisition of Frontier and its 80% interest in Angola’s Bailundo project
• JBS and Indonesia’s Danantara agree to form a US$2.5bn joint venture incorporating JBS’s Australia and New Zealand businesses and targeting further regional protein investments
• NRMA appoints Greenhill Australia to sell its SIXT Australia car rental business
• AMD agrees to acquire Canadian AI chip startup Taalas to expand its data centre AI chip capabilities
• Frasers Group makes a 65c per share takeover approach for Accent Group ((AX1))
• Quadrant Private Equity acquires Stanley College and is targeting further education deals as part of a national expansion strategy
• FleetPartners Group ((FPR)) rejects Pacific Equity Partners’ $726m takeover bid but will open due diligence to potential bidders
• Macquarie Group ((MQG)) prepares to sell its Port of Newcastle stake for more than $1.5bn
• HSBC sells its $36bn Australian loan portfolio to Blackstone as it refocuses its local operations on corporate banking
• Rimfire Pacific Mining ((RIM)) raises $2.3m through a placement, including $580k from directors and management
• Atlassian shares surge 36% following strong FY26 results, with CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes planning a US$250m share purchase
• Resouro Strategic Metals ((RAU)) raises $1.86m in the first tranche of an upsized $2.5m private placement to advance the Tiros project
• Sharon AI expands into Singapore and New Zealand ahead of a potential ASX listing
• Theta Gold Mines ((TGM)) issues 32.8m shares to settle a historical loan
• Firmus raises US$2bn in an equity round led by Coatue and Nvidia to accelerate AI factory expansion across Australia and APAC
• Income Direct and related companies enter administration, with administrators investigating the $70m fund and its exposure to Mawhinney-linked businesses
• SK Hynix plans to invest US$54bn in South Korean semiconductor manufacturing to meet AI-driven demand

On the calendar today:

-JP June Trade Bal

-JP Machine tool orders

-CH July New yuan loans

-ALCOA CORPORATION ((AAI)) ex-div 10.07c

-CAR GROUP LIMITED ((CAR)) FY26 earnings report

-CONTACT ENERGY LIMITED ((CEN)) FY26 earnings report

-DEXUS CONVENIENCE RETAIL REIT ((DXC)) earnings report

-WESTPAC BANKING CORPORATION ((WBC)) 3Q26 update

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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