Market Reports

• Australian Market Report: The S&P/ASX 200 fell 123.60 points, or 1.3 per cent, to 9077.30 in a broad-based sell-off. The Aussie dollar traded at US70.84¢ as of 5.06pm AEDT..... [more]

• U.S. Market Report: Wall Street's main indexes fell on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 hitting ‌its lowest in over two months, as investors braced for the impact of a widening Middle East conflict on oil prices, inflation and global trade..... [more]

• European Market Report: European stocks were sharply lower on Tuesday and headed for their biggest two-day drop since April as escalating Middle East tensions spurred risk aversion in financial markets..... [more]

• Asian Market Report: Asian stocks fell sharply on Tuesday, extending losses from the previous session as the latest Middle East conflict entered its fourth day..... [more]

Australian Business News

• RBA boss Michele Bullock has defended February’s interest rate hike while warning it’s “too early” to assess how the Iran conflict will impact Australia’s economy..... [more]

• Perth drivers are set to be punished at the bowser on Wednesday with prices for petrol hitting as high as $2.07 a litre amid escalating conflicts in the Middle East that threaten to disrupt global oil supplies..... [more]

• Cut red tape, tax to fix Australia's middling investment rates, business lobbies say. Australia is in the middle of the pack as a destination for global capital and is at risk of falling behind competitors without fresh efforts to simplify.... [more]

• Business groups have criticised a decision to rule out exemptions for small businesses in the Victorian government’s plan to legislate the right to work from home two days a week, saying some companies could move interstate or overseas..... [more]

• Magellan Financial Group (ASX: MFG) shares surged after emerging from a trading halt, closing nearly 22% higher after the fund manager unveiled a plan to merge with Barrenjoey, an Australian investment bank,.... [more]

• Insignia Financial’s super and retirement platform, MLC Expand, has completed the launch of its MLC Retirement Boost solution with the final retirement income piece made available to financial advisers and their clients.... [more]

• Reporting season is over and ASX 200 insiders have been busy buying. Execs snap up weakness in several names, including Pro Medicus, Perenti, Austal , Service Stream and more..... [more]

• Australia’s big four banks all have gender pay gaps wider than 17 per cent, the latest data shows. Published on Tuesday, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s updated gender pay gap data shows.... [more]

• Silver pulls back from its 4-week high. Has the rally lost steam?.... [more]

• Thermal coal prices for power generation posted their biggest jump in three years after an unprecedented outage at Qatar’s major liquefied natural gas export complex lifted expectations of fuel-switching across the electricity sector..... [more]

• A drone strike on a critical Qatari energy hub has sent global gas prices surging, handing a potential windfall to some of Australia’s largest liquefied-gas exporters but reigniting worries of spiking energy costs reaching households.... [more]

• Magellan soars +25% as Barrenjoey merger locked in by $130M placement.... [more]

• New Hope Shares Hit Multi-Year Highs as Buyback Program Extended.... [more]

• Castle Minerals has upped its patch of prime ground in WA’s gold-rich Meekatharra region, bolstering its landholdings with an additional 68 square kilometres, bringing the total to a sizeable 184sq km parcel..... [more]

• Taruga set to unlock copper-gold targets in PNG.... [more]

• Viking Mines has kicked off metallurgical test work at its Nevada-based Linka tungsten project with a result that reads more like a headline than a lab report -.... [more]

• BHP has had almost an entire court case muzzled and its demands met to toss out a coal miner’s case without even filing a defence. In a judgment published on Monday evening, Justice Needham of the Federal Court.... [more]

• Recruitment has been completed for a trial assessing Entropy Neurodynamics’ IV-infused psilocin TRP-8803 for the treatment of binge eating disorder (BED), marking an important milestone in the program’s progression..... [more]

• Australian agriculture hits $100b target four years early but production set to dip next year.... [more]

• KIIS FM has terminated Jackie “O” Henderson’s $100 million contract after she told executives she could not continue to work with Kyle Sandilands following an on-air feud with her co-star..... [more]

• Telstra is only weeks away from launching an agentic AI pilot to be led out of its customer sales and commerce engineering group as it continues to use the technology to chase cost out of its operation..... [more]

• Comment - Shani Jayamanne: The perils of the new financial system. This International Women’s Day, I explore the risks of the new financial system, and how they mirror those of the established system..... [more]

• Opinion - Simon Kuestenmacher: How the Iran war will impact Australia’s national business model.... [more]

World Business News

• Trump Acknowledges Iran War Will Keep Oil Prices Higher for Now +live blog, details may change+.... [more]

• Oil prices surge as Trump team readies to "mitigate" costs.... [more]

• The average price for a gallon of gasoline jumped 11 cents overnight to about $3.11 in the U.S., according to motor club AAA. Gas prices were already rising before the U.S. launched strikes.... [more]

• Investors are now learning a painful lesson: Buying a dip driven by geopolitics isn’t a slam dunk. The unwinding of popular retail momentum trades is interrupting the brief U.S. stock-market rebound.... [more]

• Oil isn't the only commodity that will see prices rise amid the war with Iran. According to Jefferies analysts, commodities more broadly could spike on the latest geopolitical upheaval, with some specific metals and also stocks.... [more]

• US Treasury vows 'fresh look' at bank liquidity rules.... [more]

• OpenAI Amends A.I. Deal With the Pentagon. The new pact includes additional protections to prevent the use of the company’s technology for mass surveillance of Americans..... [more]

• The AI company Anthropic was likely not in the public lexicon just a month ago. But it is now. The AI company has long been known within tech circles for its popular Claude AI assistant and coding tools. .... [more]

• Blackstone president Jon Gray on Tuesday defended the quality of loans within the firm’s flagship private credit fund after investors pulled nearly 8% from it in the last quarter..... [more]

• Spain trade embargo? Trump orders Treasury Secretary Bessent to halt dealings.... [more]

• S&P Global said on Monday it may downgrade, PacifiCorp, a utility owned by Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N), to junk status as liabilities mount from class action ​litigation over a series of Oregon wildfires in 2020..... [more]

• Critics of Palantir Technologies have often dismissed the software maker as just another so-called wrapper of artificial-intelligence models. But conflict with Iran is highlighting the company’s value to to the military.... [more]

• Target on Tuesday posted another quarter of falling revenue and customer traffic at its stores, though its shares rose as the retailer’s earnings beat estimates and it said it is poised to end its sales slump..... [more]

• Damage to three Amazon Web Services facilities in the Middle East from Iranian drone strikes highlights the rapid growth of data centers in the region, as well as the industry’s vulnerability to conflict..... [more]

• Canada's oil-rich province of Alberta is forecasting a deficit of C$9.4bn ($6.9bn; £5.1bn), citing the costs of a rising population coupled with low oil prices..... [more]

• Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras (PETR3.SA), sees oil prices under pressure ‌due to the conflict in Iran, but does not usually pass through sudden volatility to the domestic fuel market, its chief executive officer said on Monday..... [more]

• Euro-Zone Inflation Unexpectedly Rises as Iran Risks Swirl.... [more]

• Britain's government has a bigger margin for error for ​meeting its main fiscal target at ‌the end of the decade, finance minister Rachel Reeves said on Tuesday, citing ​new forecasts from the Office ​for Budget Responsibility..... [more]

• Surprise jump in UK grocery inflation makes interest rate cut less probable. ECB says Middle East war could cause higher inflationary pressure and warns of potential ‘sharp drop in output’.... [more]

• Loveholidays reportedly delays London IPO amid Iran war.... [more]

• Apollo’s Rowan Warns of Shakeout Coming for Private Markets.... [more]

• Britain said on Tuesday it would cut the amount of government debt it sells for the first time ‌in four years and that the volume of long-dated gilts due to be issued was on track to fall to the lowest in around 20 years..... [more]

• Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the ​world's largest, has made its first investment ‌in renewable energy assets in the United States, buying a 33.3% stake in a portfolio ​of 17 solar plants and five ​onshore wind power facilities,.... [more]

• Oil and gas traders have spent days scrambling for alternative sources of supply to Asia outside of the Middle East on concerns a prolonged conflict could choke off flows from the energy-rich region..... [more]

• China's Premier Li Qiang is expected to announce the country's main economic targets for 2026 at an annual parliamentary meeting which kicks off on March ​5..... [more]

• In an unprecedented Chinese New Year marketing blitz, Alibaba Group Holding, Baidu, ByteDance and Tencent Holdings spent an estimated 8 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) to turn their artificial intelligence assistants into household.... [more]

• Will Apple’s budget-priced iPhone 17e make a splash in China’s tough smartphone market?.... [more]

• Indonesia will keep budget deficit below 3% of GDP as Middle East conflict lifts oil prices, minister says.... [more]

• Opinion - Sinéad Carew and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed: U.S. software companies have stepped up their stock buyback plans during a months-long rout. Investors and strategists are skeptical that ​it will stem the selling..... [more]