Stan ChoeUpdated July 3, 2026 — 10:55am,first published July 3, 2026 — 5:20amThe Australian sharemarket has started the session in positive territory after a mixed night on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones hitting a record high but more falls for technology stocks weighing on indexes.The S&P/ASX 200 was up 58.9 points, or 0.7 per cent, at 8783.4 in early trade, with seven of 11 industry sectors in positive territory. The ASX was flat on Thursday. The Australian dollar was steady at US69.13¢.More swings for chip stocks and other winners of the artificial-intelligence boom are keeping Wall Street indexes mixed.APMining stocks are lower, with Fortescue falling 3.2 per cent after Bloomberg reported China’s state-backed buyer of iron ore signalled that it planned to restrict some of the company’s inventories held at mainland ports. China Mineral Resources Group officials asked mills and traders holding Fortescue’s Super Special Fines to take deliveries before July 15, after which the furnace feedstock would be blacklisted, people with knowledge of the matter said. Fortescue’s rivals also lost ground, with BHP slipping 0.5 per cent and Rio Tinto down 0.6 per cent.Gold miners jumped after the precious metal held two days of gains to be trading about $US4130 ($5974) an ounce after weak US jobs data reduced the chances of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates this year to tackle inflation. Northern Star surged 7 per cent and Evolution Mining bounced 4.5 per cent higher.Financial stocks advanced, with Commonwealth Bank and Westpac rising 0.4 per cent, National Australia Bank climbing 0.1 per cent and ANZ Bank advancing 0.5 per cent.Energy stocks are mixed after oil dipped in early trading as tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz increased further, adding to a gush of near-term supply while talks between the US and Iran continue. West Texas Intermediate traded 0.5 per cent lower at $US68.37 a barrel at 10.10am AEST, having fluctuated in the previous session, while Brent, the international standard, was 0.4 per cent lower at $US71.52. Woodside Energy slid 0.4 per cent and Santos edged up 0.1 per cent in early trade, but refiners were mixed, with Ampol adding 0.6 per cent and Viva Energy flat.Technology stocks are also mixed, with WiseTech up 0.2 per cent, Xero adding 0.4 per cent, and Technology One edging up 0.1 per cent but NEXTDC slumping 4 per cent.Overnight, the S&P 500 finished the day virtually unchanged and edged up less than 0.1 per cent, even though seven out of every 10 stocks within the index rose. The Dow jumped 594 points, or 1.1 per cent, while the Nasdaq composite fell 0.8 per cent after erasing an early gain.US stocks broadly got some help from a report showing that US employers added 57,000 jobs to their payrolls last month. That’s growth, which is good for the economy, but it was also short of the 100,000 jobs that economists had expected, and a slowdown from May’s hiring pace.The bright side of the weaker-than-expected result is that it could keep pressure off inflation, which has been accelerating worldwide because of jumps in oil prices caused by the war with Iran. And now that oil prices are back below where they were before the war, if inflation slows in coming months, the Federal Reserve may feel less need to raise interest rates several times this year.That would be a relief for investors, who tend to love lower interest rates because they can give the economy a boost by making it less expensive for US households and businesses to borrow money and spend. Lower rates also tend to push upwards on prices for stocks and other investments.The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond got to 4.50 per cent in the morning, up from 3.97 per cent just before the war. But after the release of the US hiring data, it immediately fell back to 4.46 per cent before drifting to 4.48 per cent.Traders now see an 82 per cent chance that the Fed and its new chairman, Kevin Warsh, will not raise the federal funds rate at its next meeting, later this month. That’s up from the 71 per cent chance of a day earlier, according to data from CME Group.“The labour market isn’t overheating,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management. He said the data could allow the Fed to wait through the northern summer to get more clues about how inflation is behaving before making a decision about raising rates.On Wall Street, stocks of companies in the crypto industry were strong after the price of bitcoin rose about 2 per cent, a day after falling near to its lowest level since 2024. Robinhood Markets rose 3.8 per cent, and Coinbase Global gained 3.9 per cent.But more drops for computer chip companies weighed on indexes. They’ve come under pressure because of worries that their share prices shot too high in the frenzy around AI and that all the spending on chips and data centres may not result in as much profit and productivity growth as hoped.Memory maker Micron Technology erased an early gain to fall 5.5 per cent, a day after plunging 10.6 per cent. Nvidia fell 1.4 per cent, and Lam Research sank 10.2 per cent. They were some of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500 because they’ve grown so huge in size amid AI mania.European indexes were stronger, and France’s CAC 40 rallied 1.7 per cent.with AP, BloombergThe Market Recap newsletter is a wrap of the day’s trading. Get it each weekday afternoon.From our partners