The financial sector also advanced, with Commonwealth Bank (up 0.5 per cent), Westpac (up 0.6 per cent), ANZ (up 1.1 per cent) and NAB (up 0.2 per cent) all gaining.

The laggards

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On the flipside, industrial stocks suffered the heaviest losses.

Large-cap shrinkage dragged the sector, with laboratory testing company ALS plummeting 8.6 per cent after it issued a profit warning, toll road operator Atlas Arteria shedding 3.6 per cent after announcing its dividend distribution, and financial administrator Computershare dropping 3.5 per cent.

The lowdown

Betashares chief economist David Bassanese said US markets may have priced in the Fed rate cut more accurately than the local bourse.

“[It’s] pretty good market performance, given Wall Street was a little bit nonplussed about what the Fed did overnight,” Bassanese said.

“Miners were a big driver today, iron ore went up. It’s maybe the idea that lower US interest rates, lower US dollar is positive for commodities, and therefore positive for our market, but I think more broadly our market seems to have taken a more optimistic take on the Fed overnight,” he said, with Wall Street having largely priced in a 50 basis point cut already over the past few days.

Local jobs data showing the Australian unemployment rate remained steady at 4.2 per cent, with 47,500 jobs added to the economy in August, also exceeded expectations, Bassanese said.

“Overall, the numbers suggest, despite the weakness of consumer spending, there is certainly life going on in the economy and certainly no green light for the RBA to consider rate cuts any time soon.”

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Overnight in New York, Wall Street wavered near its records after the Fed kicked off its efforts to prevent a recession, but retreated during Fed chair Jerome Powell’s press conference in which he poured water on hopes it was the beginning of a series of aggressive rate cuts.

The S&P 500 initially rose but closed 0.3 per cent lower after his comments. The Dow Jones shed 103 points, or 0.3 per cent. The Nasdaq composite lost 0.3 per cent.

The Fed released forecasts that said its median official expects to cut the federal funds rate by another half of a percentage point through the end of the year. That could mean a traditional-sized cut of 0.25 percentage points at each of its two remaining meetings scheduled for 2024. After that, the median Fed official is projecting another full percentage point of cuts during 2025.

Some critics say the Federal Reserve may have already kept interest rates too high for too long, doing damage to the economy.

“When the Fed is behind the curve, it sometimes takes a big move to catch up to where they should have been all along,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.

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”The love [European] customers have for Decathlon, I would really compare to the love Australians have for Bunnings … The connection is really strong,” Decathlon Australia chief executive Romain Gravigny said as the French sporting goods retailer overhauls its local strategy.

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