Our comments and expectations
External backdrop. The S&P 500 rose 0.6% yesterday. Buyers returned to the technology sector: the semiconductor index added 3.4%, and the Nasdaq 100 — 1.3%. Sentiment was supported by new AI financing deals: demand for Meta’s $25 bn share placement exceeded supply by five times, and Broadcom arranged $63 bn in financing for chip purchases for Anthropic. US consumer confidence unexpectedly rose for the first time in four months. Today, attention shifts to the Fed decision and the earnings reports of Microsoft and Alphabet. Gains also touched US corporate bonds: the high-yield debt ETF from our table added 0.5%, while the 10-year government bond yield barely changed, staying around 4.99%. In the table quotes, Brent fell 1.2% to $109.4 amid diplomatic efforts to ease tensions in the Persian Gulf. This morning, Asian tech stocks continue to recover: strong results from SK Hynix and plans for additional shareholder payouts supported the Kospi’s rise by about 6%. Nevertheless, oil is rising again after reports of a possible US military campaign after the midterm elections.
KASE Index. KASE rose 0.44% yesterday to 7,877.38 points, fully offsetting Friday’s decline. Quotes continued to move within the local “flag” channel; however, in our view, after yesterday’s session in Western markets, some bearish risks we wrote about yesterday have decreased.
Index stocks. The main support came from Kaspi, Kazatomprom, and Halyk Bank. At the same time, the recovery was uneven: Kazakhtelecom pulled back after the previous rise; KazMunayGas and Kcell also declined. Trading resumed after a holiday, so local stocks reflected changes in the external backdrop all at once for several foreign sessions. Kaspi rose 2.2% yesterday, but is down 0.4% today. Neither on KASE nor on Nasdaq were there any significant changes in the technical picture. However, Kazatomprom’s 3.6% gain provided a reason to think about a potential upward break from the wedge formation. A fly in the ointment remains the fact that the quotes did not hold at the session highs, which prevented them from confidently breaking the descending trend line. Uranium ETFs, meanwhile, are showing even more interesting technical hints of a reversal, so the chances of growth in Kazatomprom’s GDRs remain. Meanwhile, KEGOC reported net profit for nine months of 84.3 bn tenge. In addition, the projects to strengthen the Southern Zone and connect Western Kazakhstan to the unified power system are being implemented ahead of schedule. These are significant news items for assessing the company’s results and investment program; the release was published in the evening, after the main trading session.
Currency. The dollar showed a very interesting move yesterday: USDKZT quotes rose to 456.2 tenge, which is slightly, but above the resistance level we marked at 455–456 tenge. Today the rate is rising a little further, to 456.5 tenge. This can be regarded as a hint from the FX market of a reversal, albeit still rather distant.