Market Wrap / Where's Santa?

The S&P/ASX 200 finished a turbulent week in the red, dropping 34.30 points or 0.41% during Friday’s trade to 8,296. For the week, the ASX200 was down 1.5%.

Seven out of 11 sectors came under pressure today, with materials having the largest fall, down 1.8%. 

IRESS was one of the best performers, jumping 8.2% after the software company announced plans to reinstate dividends and reaffirmed its 2024 adjusted earnings guidance of between $126 to $132 million.

Data Centre DigoCo REIT debuted on the ASX, in one of the biggest IPOs in six years. Shares were offered at $5 in the float and finished the day’s trade down 9% at $4.55.

Insignia Financial shares rocketed higher by 6.2% after it received a $1.7 billion takeover offer from private investment firm, Bain Capital. The non-binding all-cash proposal from the private equity firm values the wealth manager at $2.67 billion and Insignia's board says it is "considering" the proposal. 

Rio Tinto fell 2.8% as it committed US$2.5 billion to expand its Rincon project in South America. It’s Rio’s first commercial scale project in lithium operations, set to produce 60k tonnes of battery grade lithium carbonate per year. 

Tonight, US import and export prices for November are due.

Next week, the Federal Government’s mid-year budget update is slated for release while the Federal Reserve is expected to hand down another 25bps rate cut.