ASX set to fall following meagre Wall Street gains

Waller said he didn’t expect tariffs that were possibly coming under President-elect Donald Trump to have a “significant or persistent effect” on inflation. And even though inflation has shown stubbornness recently, Waller still sees it trending downward over the long term.

“If the outlook evolves as I have described here, I will support continuing to cut our policy rate in 2025,” he said. “The pace of those cuts will depend on how much progress we make on inflation, while keeping the labour market from weakening.”

The yield on the two-year Treasury, which tends to closely track expectations for Fed action, fell immediately after Waller’s speech and the release of a couple of economic reports. It eased to 4.27 per cent from 4.29 per cent late on Tuesday.

One of the reports suggested US employers outside the government slowed their hiring in December by more than economists expected. That could offer a hint of what Friday’s more comprehensive jobs report from the Labour Department will show.

That update will likely be the main event for Wall Street this week, particularly after the stock market’s closure on Thursday in observance of a national day of mourning for former president Jimmy Carter. The hope is that the jobs report will show enough strength to keep worries of a recession stifled but not so much that it keeps the Fed from cutting rates.

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On the winning end of Wall Street, eBay jumped 9.9 per cent for the biggest gain in the S&P 500. The company is beginning a collaboration with Meta Platforms, where a pilot of select eBay listings will appear on Facebook Marketplace in the US, Germany and France.

Cal-Maine Foods climbed 1 per cent after the egg producer reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Chief executive Sherman Miller said the company sold more eggs thanks in part to strong demand from the seasonal boost it gets before Thanksgiving.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 9.22 points to 5918.25. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 106.84 to 42,635.20, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 10.80 to 19,478.88.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia. South Korea’s Kospi climbed 1.2 per cent, but Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.9 per cent.

AP

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