Shopping centre giant Scentre, which owns the Westfield shopping centres in Australia and New Zealand, was down 1.5 per cent. Its half-year profits were at $403 million, up a record 170.3 per cent, thanks to book gains from rising property valuations.

The big four banks were all tracking down at midday, with CBA, Australia’s largest company, dropping the most, by 0.7 per cent. On the mining front, Rio Tinto was down 0.1 per cent, while Fortescue grew 2.3 per cent, and BHP shrank by a little. The Australian dollar was buying US67.46¢.

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On Wall Street overnight, the S&P 500 fell 0.2 per cent, still just 1.2 per cent below its all-time high set last month. The Dow Jones slipped 0.2 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.3 per cent.

Nvidia was the heaviest weight on the market after falling 2.1 per cent. The chip company is one of Wall Street’s most influential stocks because a frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology has made it one of the US stock market’s most valuable companies at roughly $US3 trillion ($4.5 trillion).

Nvidia has recovered most of its recent swoon, where its stock dropped more than 20 per cent on worries investors went overboard and took its price too high, but it has remained shaky as it heads into its earnings report scheduled for next week.

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Companies in the S&P 500 are on track to report their best growth in earnings per share since the end of 2021, according to FactSet.

High interest rates have been weighing on the economy after the Federal Reserve hiked them sharply to get inflation under control. On Tuesday, Treasury yields were easing ahead of a speech on Friday by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, one that’s likely to be the week’s highlight for financial markets.

The economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Powell will be speaking, has been home to big policy announcements in the past. Expectations aren’t that high this time around, with nearly everyone already expecting the Fed will begin cutting interest rates next month.

A surprisingly weak report on hiring by US employers last month raised worries the Fed has already kept interest rates too high for too long, but ensuing data on everything from inflation to sales at US retailers helped bolstered optimism.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 3.82 per cent from 3.87 per cent late on Monday.

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In other international markets, Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.8 per cent to claw back all of its sharp loss from the day earlier. Japan has been home to some of the world’s most vicious moves for financial markets recently after the Bank of Japan raised interest rates there last month.

That hike triggered losses for markets around the world because it forced many hedge funds to abandon a popular trade all at once, where they had borrowed Japanese yen cheaply and invested it elsewhere. That included the worst day for Japan’s stock market since the Black Monday crash of 1987.

But an ensuing assurance from the Bank of Japan on interest rates has helped calm the market, along with the better-than-expected data on the US economy.

with AP

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