ASX set to advance, Wall Street steady; Oil prices slip

Wall Street held near its record high in a relatively quiet day for markets worldwide.

The S&P 500 closed flat and is sitting 0.4 per cent below its all-time high set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 185 points, or 0.4 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite advanced 0.5 per cent.

The Australian sharemarket is set to rise, with futures at 5.58am AEST pointing to a rise of 27 points, or 0.3 per cent, at the open. The ASX added 0.3 per cent on Tuesday. The Australian dollar was trading at US71.12¢.

US stocks had been higher in the morning, when the price for a barrel of Brent crude briefly fell below $US98. But oil prices later trimmed their losses, and Brent was most recently at $US99.66 per barrel.

That’s down from the nearly $US110 that it touched last week, but it’s still much more expensive than the $US72 it was fetching before the war with Iran began. It’s been swinging with uncertainty about when the war will allow crude to freely flow again from the Middle East to customers worldwide.

On Wall Street, AutoZone rose 3.2 per cent after the retailer reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, though its revenue fell short. CEO Phil Daniele said the auto parts seller faced “a difficult selling environment” in the first two months of the quarter, but it improved afterward and “we feel we are well positioned for sales growth” in its upcoming fiscal year.

At Thor Industries, which sells recreational vehicles, the mood was more muted. CEO Bob Martin said expensive fuel, high interest rates and still-high inflation are stretching its customers’ budgets, and business “never reached the inflection point many in the industry expected” in its latest fiscal year.

Its stock rose 5.5 per cent, though, after it delivered a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Such strong profit reports are one of the main reasons the US stock market has reached the brink of its all-time high despite high oil prices and jitters about whether stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry shot too high.

Many companies are close to closing the books on their third quarter of the year, which ends with September. And analysts are forecasting companies in the S&P 500 will report overall growth of nearly 29 per cent for the quarter from a year earlier, according to FactSet.

If they’re right, it would be the third straight quarter of growth better than 25 per cent for the index. And stock prices tend to follow the track of corporate profits over the long term.

On Holding’s stock that trades in the United States jumped 8.6 per cent after the Swiss sneaker and sportswear company unveiled its financial goals for upcoming years. It also approved a plan to buy back up to $US1 billion ($1.4 billion) of its stock through 2029. Such purchases send cash directly to investors and boost the company’s per-share performance.

On the losing end of Wall Street were several stocks of companies in the oil and gas industry, which were hurt by the drop in crude prices.