ASX gains after RBA keeps rates on hold ahead of ‘Liberation Day’

The same went for real estate investment trusts, with industry heavyweight Goodman Group up 2.7 per cent. Shopping centre landlords Scentre (up 1.8 per cent) and Stockland (up 2.2 per cent) and office buildings owner GPT Group (up 1.2 per cent) also posted strong gains.

Home builder AVJennings shares jumped 8.3 per cent on the news US real estate giant Proprium Capital Partners and its local development arm, Avid Property, is set to acquire the company after it ended talks with rival bidder Ho Bee Land.

The laggards

Building materials giant James Hardie continued its declines, which are mounting since it announced a $14 billion blockbuster deal last week to combine with AZEK, a US maker of outdoor-living products. The stock slumped a further 3.9 per cent amid investor concerns it is paying a heavy premium for the company in an uncertain market. The company has lost more than a quarter of its sharemarket value over the past month.

Insurer Tower fell 8.2 per cent after investment firm Bain Capital offloaded its 19.9 per cent in the Auckland-based company.

The lowdown

The local gains come after a wild session on Wall Street overnight as investors grappled with Trump’s fast-approaching “Liberation Day” on April 2, when he plans to announce his administration’s latest tariff plans for imports into the world’s largest economy.

The Reserve Bank left its cash rate target unchanged at 4.1 per cent, saying it was “cautious about the outlook”. While inflation had fallen considerably since 2022, the central bank said it had to be “confident that this progress will continue” before considering further rate moves.

“Uncertainty about the outlook abroad also remains significant,” the Reserve Bank said in its decision, citing the US tariffs and other geopolitical uncertainties. “Many central banks have eased monetary policy since the start of the year, but they have become increasingly attentive to the evolving risks from recent global policy developments,” it noted.

Looking at the RBA’s comments, CBA economist Gareth Aird noted that the central bank had been “going out of its way not to provide any forward guidance” for markets to where interest rates are headed.

“It will be up to the economic data and potential developments in the global economy that will feed into future monetary policy decisions,” he said.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.6 per cent overnight in another roller-coaster day, after being down as much as 1.7 per cent in early trade. The reversal helped the index shave its loss for the first three months of the year to 4.6 per cent, but it was still the worst quarter in two-and-a-half years.

The Dow Jones also swerved higher after erasing an initial loss, and it climbed 417 points, or 1 per cent. Slides for Tesla, Nvidia and other influential big tech stocks, though, sent the Nasdaq composite down 0.1 per cent.

Such neck-twisting turns have become routine for the US stock market recently because of uncertainty about what Trump will do with tariffs – and by how much they will worsen inflation and grind down growth for economies. Wall Street’s swings followed a sell-off that spanned the world earlier on Monday as worries built about the effects of the tariffs that Trump says will bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.

“The best way to summarise this trading environment is frustration and fatigue,” said Joe Gilbert, a portfolio manager at Integrity Asset Management. “We don’t really have a clear playbook on how to proceed.”

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 index dropped 4 per cent. South Korea’s Kospi sank 3 per cent, and France’s CAC 40 fell 1.6 per cent.

Instead of stocks, prices strengthened for things considered safer bets when the economy is looking shaky. Gold rose again to briefly crest $US3160 per ounce.

Prices for US Treasury bonds also climbed, which in turn sent their yields down. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.21 per cent from 4.27 per cent late on Friday and from roughly 4.8 per cent in January.

On Wednesday, the United States is set to begin what Trump calls “reciprocal” tariffs, which will be tailored to match what he sees is the burden each country places on his, including things such as value-added taxes. Much is still unknown, including exactly what the US government will do on “Liberation Day”.

At Goldman Sachs, economists expect Trump to announce an average 15 per cent reciprocal tariff. They also raised their forecast for inflation and lowered it for US economic growth for the end of the year.

They now see a 35 per cent chance of recession in the next year, up from an earlier forecast of 20 per cent, “reflecting our lower-growth forecast, falling confidence, and statements from White House officials indicating willingness to tolerate economic pain,” according to Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle.

If the April 2 tariffs end up being less onerous than investors fear – maybe Trump includes no additional tariff increases on China, for example – stocks could rally. But if they end up being a worst-case scenario, which gets businesses so fearful that they start cutting their workforces, stocks could sink much further.

Of course, there’s also the chance that April 2 does little to clear the uncertainty. It could end up being a “stepping stone for further negotiations” instead of a “clearing event” for the market, according to Michael Wilson and other strategists at Morgan Stanley.

“This means policy uncertainty and growth risks are likely to persist – it’s a question of to what degree,” Wilson wrote in a report.

One worry is that even if Trump’s tariffs end up being less harsh than feared, all the uncertainty created by them alone could cause US households and businesses to freeze their spending, which would hurt an economy that had been running at a solid pace to close last year.

Either way, some familiar names were among Wall Street’s hardest hit on Monday.

Tesla fell 1.7 per cent to bring its loss for the year so far to 35.8 per cent. It’s been one of the year’s worst performers in the S&P 500 in large part because of fears that the electric vehicle maker’s brand has become too intertwined with its CEO, Elon Musk.

Musk has been leading US government efforts to cut spending, making him a target of growing political anger, and protests have swarmed Tesla showrooms as a result.

Other big tech stocks also struggled. They’ve been at the sell-off’s centre in large part because of criticism that their stock prices had become too expensive. Critics pointed to how their prices rose faster than their already quick-growing profits in recent years.

Nvidia, which has ridden the frenzy around artificial intelligence technology to become one of Wall Street’s most influential stocks, fell 1.2 per cent to bring its loss for the year so far to 19.3 per cent.

On the winning side of Wall Street, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway rose 1.2 per cent and was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. The parent of GEICO and other companies said earlier this year it’s sitting on $334.2 billion in unused cash. Such a large amount could indicate Buffett, who’s famous for buying when prices are low, may see little worth purchasing in a stock market that critics had called too expensive.

With AP, Bloomberg

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