ASX set to fall, Wall Street slumps as Fed holds but signals rate rise this year

Brought to you by BULLS N’ BEARS

Andrew Todd

June 19, 2026 — 5:03pm

Perfect timing.

As news landed that the US was inching towards a peace deal with Iran and the FIFA World Cup kicked off, the long-awaited SpaceX IPO finally launched, in what can only be described as a roaring success.

The float was always expected to be enormous, but few anticipated quite how quickly investors would lose their minds.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears ASX Runner of the Week is… Norwood Systems. Shares issued at US$135 (A$190) apiece at IPO opened at US$160 (A$225) and didn’t look back. By Tuesday, SpaceX had surged to almost US$230 (A$310) a share in after-hours trading, adding more than US$1 trillion (A$1.4 trillion) of value in less than a week and sending the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk, $1 trillion ahead of his next-closest rival.

Investors aren’t apparently buying today’s earnings; they’re buying tomorrow’s possibilities.

Even Australia’s richest person is buying in. Mining magnate Gina Rinehart lavished praise on Musk this week, saying he had “not just imagined the future, he has built companies capable of delivering it”. The glowing praise turned a little more self-congratulatory after she revealed an investment of more than US$1 billion (A$1.41 billion) in SpaceX. At one point during the week, her paper profits had swelled by more than A$700 million.

Meanwhile, the broader share market found another reason to celebrate. After weeks of missile strikes, tanker scares and breathless headlines surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, Trump finally unveiled what he described as a peace deal with Iran. Skeptics were quick to point out the agreement looked suspiciously like a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with very little actual ink attached to it, but markets weren’t interested in the fine print.

Instead, investors focused on the one thing they could measure immediately: oil prices.

Crude suffered one of its ugliest weeks in recent memory on news of a move towards full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The energy benchmark plunged more than 10 per cent at one point, making it comfortably the biggest loser across major commodities.

That collapse in oil prices immediately soothed inflation fears that had been building throughout June. With the market’s favourite pricing bellwether suddenly moving in the right direction, global equities resumed their march higher and investors once again found themselves reaching for risk.

Central bankers, however, appeared less convinced. The Reserve Bank of Australia elected to keep rates on hold this week. At the same time, the US Federal Reserve maintained its increasingly hawkish tone, warning that further tightening may still be required despite the sharp retreat in energy prices. It was a timely reminder that while markets are often happy to declare victory, policymakers generally prefer to wait for the scoreboard.

With the war seemingly cooling and oil and inflation fears fading, our attention can now shift to the weekend’s main event. The Socceroos head to Seattle looking to achieve something that neither a war in Iran nor the US Fed have managed all year - put the Americans firmly on the back foot and retreating.

With the market obsession surrounding SpaceX and its AI future implications, our Runners’ precession this week was all things AI, with a few honourable mentions from a couple of Australian-based critical minerals maestros surging on some serious potential.

NORWOOD SYSTEMS LTD (ASX: NOR)

Up 200% (0.9c – 2.7c)

Bulls N’ Bears Runner of the Week is AI-telecommunications savant Norwood Systems, after it cracked the major leagues with an inked deal to provide pilot services to a major UK telecommunications provider for its OpenSpan AI Services Orchestration Platform and CogVoice AI voice applications.

The pilot, valued at approximately £150,000 (A$285,000), will test a suite of AI-driven voice capabilities including intelligent call routing, scheduling, automated provisioning workflows, and deep analytics.

While the financial size of the agreement is relatively modest, the market response indicates a re-rating driven once again by the technology’s future scalability, rather than immediate revenue.

The AI-hungry market gobbled the news, seeing the adoption of artificial intelligence in telecommunications infrastructure as a near-term reality over whatever 6G package is no doubt on the horizon.

Its OpenSpan service is a cloud-native orchestration platform built on Microsoft Azure that bridges traditional telco networks and modern web service environments. It acts as a governing layer, allowing telecom carriers to quickly deploy AI voice features such as fraud detection, live translation, call summaries and intelligent routing.

Norwood says the deal validates its OpenSpan platform in a live UK telecom environment, signalling potential global adoption of the platform in real-world networks and that the contract has clearly influenced longer-term commercial expectations.

CAULDR…