Issue #34 | Rates Rise, Gold Shines

ASX - Top 3 Winners & Losers
Deals Down Under - Wiluna relisting
Global Markets - US Fed rates
Other News - Aussie Politics, Sport and Culture

The ASX 200 fell 1% this week, as gains in tech weren't enough to offset heavy selling in energy and mining stocks. Australia's economy grew faster than expected last quarter, which sounds like good news, but this has caused economists and traders to price in more RBA rate hikes on top of the three already delivered this year. Markets are now pointing to a 65% chance of a fourth increase at the September 29 meeting, adding to the pressure heading into next week.

The week’s best performers 

PEXA Group (ASX:PXA) +11.23%

PEXA Group, the digital property settlement platform, clawed back some ground after last Friday's 17.43% sell-off on the back of its FY26 result, with Macquarie keeping an ‘Outperform’ rating and arguing the market had overreacted to conservative FY27 guidance. The underlying numbers were solid, with revenue up 7% to $406.9m, earnings (EBITDA) up 12% and free cash flow up 39%, while net debt fell and net leverage dropped from 1.8x to 1.0x, though the stock remains down 45.45% since the start of 2026.

Graincorp (ASX:GNC) +9.31%

GrainCorp, the grain storage, handling and processing company, rallied after the ABARES lifted its 2026-27 winter crop forecasts on a wetter than expected southern winter, with wheat production revised up to 29.9 million tonnes and canola to 7.27 million tonnes. A bigger harvest matters for GrainCorp, which had already slashed FY26 EBITDA guidance to $200-240m from $308m on a weak crop and thin export margins. The rally has since eased 3.13% by Friday as investors weighed whether the upgrade is enough to offset ongoing margin pressure.

Dalrymple Bay Infrastructure (ASX:DBI) +6.73%

The company that operated the world’s largest metallurgical coal export facility, Dalrymple Bay Infrastructure, lifted after successful half-year results showed higher sales, revenue and net income. Dalrymple's earnings are seen as inflation-protected, but its stock price looks unjustifiably more expensive than its global infrastructure peers, trading at 72.9 times earnings versus an average of 16.1x, and its long-term exposure to metallurgical coal demand leaves plenty of room for scepticism.

This week's worst performers

Pinnacle Investment Management (ASX:PNI) -18.32%

Pinnacle Investment Management, the multi-affiliate investment management platform, extended a slide that began with a 10.1% plunge after fellow asset manager Platypus Asset Management was shut down, stoking broader fears around private credit exposure across the sector. The drop overshadowed a strong FY26 result, with net profit after tax up 31% to $176.7m and affiliate funds under management up 27.9% to $229.4bn.

Silex Systems (ASX:SLX) -16.28%

The company that specialises in laser-based isotope separation technology, Silex Systems, gave back a chunk of last week's 16.63% surge, which had come after it posted FY26 revenue nearly doubling to $26.74m and narrowed its net loss to $38.62m. With little fresh news out this week, the pullback looks like straightforward profit-taking after a stock that had already run up around 30% over the past month, rather than a reaction to any new development. 

Lovisa Holdings (ASX:LOV) -12.41%

The fast-fashion jewellery retailer, Lovisa Holdings, fell despite FY26 sales climbing 17.6% to roughly $938.8m and net profit up around 10.7%, as investors focused on comparable-store sales growth coming in softer than the overall number. That gap suggests a meaningful chunk of Lovisa's growth is still coming from opening new stores rather than existing ones selling more, raising questions about how the growth story holds up once their “aggressive” global expansion eventually slows.

Wiluna Mining, holder of one of the largest undeveloped gold resources in Australia at 7 million ounces, is preparing to file prospectus documents next week for a fresh run at the ASX worth roughly $500 million on a fully diluted basis. The company was delisted in 2024, two years after collapsing into voluntary administration, and is now racing to relist and repay the creditors who backed its rescue.

Wiluna collapsed in 2022 after cost blowouts, tightening supplier terms and pandemic disruptions left it unable to fund its mine plan, and FTI Consulting restructured roughly $96 million in secured and unsecured debt. Contractors Byrnecut and Delphi, who backed that rescue, became Wiluna's largest shareholders and are now among the creditors pushing for an exit through the float.

The float has already slipped once, after a carbon in leach tank ruptured at the processing plant in July, forcing chief executive Victor Rajasooriar to suspend operations and cut staff. Wiluna now needs the $160 million to $200 million raise, led by Argonaut Securities and Barrenjoey Capital Partners, largely to repay its creditor group.

Elsewhere, Mark Creasy's AIM Mining Corporation, which holds about a 10 per cent stake, has abandoned its bid to buy Wiluna outright after an unsuccessful legal challenge.

The real driver is timing. Gold is trading above US$4300 an ounce, near record highs, and Wiluna's resource base, paired with a 2.1 million tonne a year processing facility, is exactly the scale investors are chasing in a hot gold market. The last attempt to list fell over within weeks, and this time Wiluna is betting the rally holds long enough not to give it another chance to slip.

Global markets spent the week caught in a tug-of-war over US interest rates, one that took a bizarre turn when Trump picked a fight with the Fed chair he hand-picked himself. Kevin Warsh took over from Jerome Powell in May, installed after Trump spent over a year demanding rate cuts, but Warsh has held rates steady at both meetings since and used his first Jackson Hole speech to sound hawkish, warning that underlying inflation "hasn't meaningfully improved".

Markets whipsawed accordingly. Christopher Waller, one of the Fed's seven governors, said he'd support holding rates steady if inflation keeps easing, which briefly lifted Wall Street, with the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all closing over 1% higher and rate-hike odds cooling from 63% to 50%.

That calm didn't last. Friday's August jobs report blew past expectations, with employers adding 162,000 jobs versus the roughly 56,000 forecast, reviving hike bets and pushing the 10-year Treasury yield back toward its highest level since November 2023.

Trump's response was to escalate, threatening on Truth Social to halt trade entirely with every country the US runs a deficit with, over $1.2 trillion worth, unless the Fed cuts rates, calling it "better than tariffs."

For Australia, the stakes are the interest rate path itself. Elevated US yields keep the US dollar firm and borrowing costs high globally, pressure that flows straight through to the ASX, where high-growth and tech names are most sensitive to where US rates land. An actual trade embargo would also be a fresh shock to global trade flows that an export-heavy economy like Australia's would feel quickly.

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