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Good morning, it’s Friday, April 28 and not only have you made it to the end of the week, you’ve also found yourself on the ABC’s markets and business blog.
It’s been a busy day on Wall Street — it’s had strong gains overnight led by a surge in tech shares, namely Meta and Amazon.
Facebook’s parent company gained in early trade, and finished the day up 13.9%, thanks to stronger than expected earnings this week.
Amazon was also up 4.6%, after reporting a mammoth $US3.2 billion ($4.8 billion) profit and revenue of $US127.4 billion ($192.2 billion)— considerably higher than what analysts were expecting.
But it wasn’t all rosy news out of the US overnight.
The latest GDP (or economic growth) figures were out, showing the US economy grew by 1.1% in the last three months, which has done little to stave off the threat of a recession later this year.
In fact, chief economist at PNC Financial in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Gus Faucher told Reuters:
“A US recession is likely to start in the second half of this year,” he said.
“It should be mild however, as consumer balance sheets remain strong, and the tight labour market will discourage layoffs.”
Back home, and new data from AEMO shows renewable energy has surged while fossil fuel-fired energy output has hit record low levels in Australia’s biggest energy grid — leading to large falls in wholesale power prices.
It’s also the end of an era in Liddell, in the NSW Hunter Valley, where the Liddell power station will go offline for the final time today.
All in all, there’s a bit on — grab a coffee, settle in and let’s see where the day takes us.
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