Live: Markets on edge as US-Iran war flares again, oil price under pressure

The ASX has slipped with global markets on edge after the US and Iran exchanged missile and drone fire over the weekend, causing a spike in global oil prices.

Telstra has warned customers to be alert to a spate of scams in the wake of its big network outage last week.

Follow the day’s financial news and insights from our specialist business reporters on our live blog.

Disclaimer: this blog is not intended as investment advice.

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 2:00pm

Update

ASX 200: -0.2% to 8,789 points (live values below)
ASX 200 (Friday): +0.5% to 8,806 points
Australian dollar: -0.3% to 69.27 US cents
Asia: Nikkei -1.8%, Hang Seng -0.2%, Kospi -7.5%, Shanghai -1.3%
Wall Street (Friday): S&P 500 +0.4%, Dow +0.3% Nasdaq +0.3%
Europe (Friday): Dax -0.2%, FTSE +0.2%, Eurostoxx -0.2%
Spot gold: -1.5% to $US4,059/ounce
Oil: Brent futures +4.1% to $US79.12/barrel, WTI futures +4.1% to $U74.32/barrel
Iron ore (Friday): +0.6% to $US99.30/tonne
Copper (LME, Friday): +2.4% to $US13,481/tonne
Bitcoin: -2.2% at $US63,773

Prices current at around 2:00pm AEST

Live prices on the major ASX indices:

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 4:17pm

Coffee prices come off the boil (at least for a short time)

A bit earlier in the day we posted about how a combination of war and weather was driving up global soft commodity prices like wheat and maize.

And with oil bubbling up again, the inflationary consequences aren’t great.

Well, the blog’s extensive back-room research team has been looking for some good news — as our readers often encourage us to do — and we have found some (unless you are a coffee or cocoa grower).

Yes, coffee prices tumbled 8% on Friday, cocoa was down 10%.

But enough of the good news schtick.

Arabica coffee beans gained 11% for the week, while Robusta beans were up a more modest 5%. Cocoa jumped 20%.

Market participants said a rush of speculative money looking for a home hit soft commodities earlier this week, drawn by concerns that the El Nino weather pattern will strengthen and lead to increasingly adverse weather in key growing regions.

The ICE exchange then repeatedly raised margin requirements during the week, or the down payments for coffee and cocoa futures contracts, limiting the amount of liquidity in the market and in turn increasing price volatility.

“There’s a vacuum of liquidity (and) a lot of these speculators are trading the intraday. They are out by (the market) close,” said a coffee analyst at a multinational agri-commodities trade house.

Friday’s reprieve may only temporary, as long-range weather forecasts point to some bitter times ahead for coffee and chocolate lovers.

The U.S. Climate Prediction Center has forecast an 81% chance of a very strong El Nino during October-December that would rank among the largest on record.

El Nino is especially worrisome for cocoa as it disrupts weather patterns in No. 3 grower Ecuador as well as in West Africa, where some 70% of the world’s chocolate ingredient is grown.

Cocoa futures nearly tripled in 2024 after the West African harvest failed amid an El Nino weather pattern that ran from mid-2023 to mid-2024 and was considered a moderate-to-strong occurrence.

Top cocoa grower Ivory Coast’s upcoming 2026/27 main crop is expected to drop more than 10% amid excess rains, disease and insufficient crop care, pod counters and exporters based in the country said.

With Reuters

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 3:35pm

Deutsche Bank fined $2 million for misreporting trades

Deutsche Bank has paid a $2 million fine for misreporting more than 260,000 over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transactions.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) issued the infringement notice after finding that the German bank failed to accurately report the ‘direction’ field data across foreign exchange and commodities transactions between October 21, 2024 and August, 15, 2025.

ASIC considered the direction data reporting failures were systemic and reflected deficiencies in Deutsche Bank’s internal reporting framework.

Deutsche Bank has cooperated with the investigation and is implementing measures to prevent further reporting errors, ASIC noted.

Reuters

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 3:25pm

ASX clawing back

Without wishing to jinx things, it’s worth noting that the ASX 200 has just scrambled over the advantage line to be 1.9 points, or 0.02% up for the day with less than an hour to go

It’s fair to say the blue-chips of the ASX top 20 have done most of the grunt work.

At 3:15pm AEST, the ASX 20 was up almost 0.4%, led by Wesfarmers (+1.8%) and Telstra (+1.5%).

Gold miner, Northern Star (-2.4%) is typical of gold’s fortunes, or lack thereof, today.

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 3:07pm

ABC Business Daily: Why pay isn’t keeping up with productivity

To paraphrase Roy & HG, who turn paraphrased Mark Twain*, “too many stories on productivity, are barely enough”.

We posted ABC guru-in-resident Alan Kohler’s contribution earlier, now Daniel Ziffer and Gareth Hutchens on the ABC Business Daily podcast pick up the productivity ball and run with it.

*The original quote was along the lines of “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.” Something to mull over when listening to Dan and Gareth – unless, of course, you’re driving home in the afternoon commute.

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 2:51pm

Kospi suspends trading as chipmakers tumble

South Korea’s stock market has again suspended trading as an 8%+ tumble on the benchmark Kospi index has triggered a circuit breaker for the seventh time this year.

The Kospi is now below the 7,000-point mark for the first time in two months.

However, the decline should be put in context with the roughly 160% gain over the past 12 months.

Blame for today’s shutdown can be placed firmly in the lap of two stocks, chipmakers SK Hynix (-13.2%) and Samsung Electronics (-9.1%) which together count for around half the Kospi’s total capitalisation.

The circuit breaker is more a brief cooling off period, last just 20 minutes before trading resumes, hopefully in a calmer fashion.

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 2:32pm

Oil traders not buying Iranian claims: CBA

The global Brent crude futures benchmark has jumped around 4% back above $US79/barrel — move that suggests a degree of concern, but not hair-on-fire panic.

CBA’s veteran commodities analyst Vivek Dhar says the relatively contained spike suggests traders are not buying what Iranian news outlets are selling — namely, that the IRGC has closed the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping. Certainly, doubts remain.

Iran said the strait would now be closed “until further notice” over the weekend, while the US Central Command said the key waterway was still open for ships to transit.

While tensions have ratchetted up in the past week and ceasefire abandoned, Brent has hovered in the range of around $US75-to-$US80/barrel.

“These price levels generally suggest that markets expect that the Strait of Hormuz will remain open and oil tankers will continue to transit through the key waterway,” Mr Dhar said.

“Therefore, markets are heavily discounting Iran’s claims the strait is currently closed.”

Mr Dhar said markets believe the tit-for-tat attacks between the US and Iran will not result in both parties returning to the heavy fighting that characterised the early portion of the Iran war.

“This belief is underpinned by the mutual benefit of the strait remaining open for both the US and Iran — suggesting that the tit for tat attacks reflect both parties vying to show control over the key waterway for leverage in ongoing US Iran talks.”

With tankers showing increasingly more risk tolerance to pass through the strait despite the attacks on ships, Mr Dhar says there is some logic in the belief that even if the Strait is closed, it won’t be for long.

However, given the low level of global oil inventories held outside the Gulf, the risks of a prolonged closure should not be overlooked.

“We had put inventory depletion risks taking 6 to 8 weeks to materialise,” Mr Dhar wrote in a research note.

“Even if we round this up to 10 weeks assuming a build in global oil inventories from mid-June to early July, there is a limited runway before inventory depletion risks materialise again.

“If inventory depletion levels are reached, we see Brent oil futures needing to rise as high as $US150/barrel to reduce oil demand in emerging Asian economies (i.e. demand destruction).”

“Given inventory depletion likely means Brent oil futures closer to $US150/barrel, markets are discounting this scenario too.”

Brent & WTI futures (2 years) (ICE, Nymex, Bloomberg, CBA)

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 1:40pm

ICYMI: Kohler on Australia’s falling productivity

So, what’s behind Australia’s falling productivity?

Our one-person productivity phenomenon Alan Kohler has taken time away from his various column, podcasting, 7PM finance update and publishing duties to produce a think piece on the nation’s current productivity travails.

Spoiler alert: Corporate Australia will probably not enjoy AK’s findings. Check it out, only 1min 48 of your time (then get back to work).

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Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 1:10pm

SK Hynix share stumble on profit taking

Having seen its Nasdaq debut take off like a scalded cat on Friday, the giant South Korean chip maker SK Hynix received something of a reality check on its home turf today.

SK Hynix shares dropped as much as 8.2% in early Seoul tradeas investors booked profit, after its high-profile US listing saw the world’s leading AI memory chipmaker surge 12.8% on its first session on the Nasdaq.

However, SK Hynix shareholders shouldn’t feel too aggrieved, the stock is up around 200% in the year to date, and along with Samsung Electronics, the two memory chip powers houses account for around half of the Kospi index by capitalisation.

Today’s sell down saw the Kospi fall around 3% heading into the afternoon session.

The firm raised over $US26 billion selling American Depositary Receipts priced $US149 each, in what is regarded as the second largest float in history, eclipsed only by the Space X IPO last month.

The ADRs opened 14% above the offer price at $US170 before ending their first trading day with a 12.8% gain.

Senior analyst at NH Investment & Securities, Ryu Young-ho, said investors were profit-taking after the conclusion of the US listing, while sentiment also suffered from caution with regards to SK Hynix’s second-quarter earnings.

He said investors had expected shipments of SK Hynix’s HBM4 chips to increase from the second quarter, but that the increase does not appear to have materialised at scale.

Ryu also said investors had moderated earnings expectations because SK Hynix, with its greater exposure to the HBM market than cross-town rival Samsung Electronics, was set to benefit less from a recent rise in prices for conventional DRAM chips.

SK Hynix led the market for high bandwidth memory chips with a 58% revenue share in the first quarter, whereas Samsung and U.S. competitor Micron Technology each held 21%, Counterpoint Research data showed.

HBM chips are primarily used in artificial intelligence systems for customers such as Nvidia and Alphabet’s Google.

With Reuters

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 12:45pm

Great news for travellers – overseas arrival cards soon to be dispatched to the wastebin of history

By National tourism reporter Kristy Sexton-McGrath

For decades, arriving in Australia has followed the same familiar routine.

About an hour before landing, flight attendants hand out the orange arrival cards. Tray tables come down. Then, almost instantly, a cabin full of passengers starts digging through bags looking for a pen.

The lucky few packed one. Everyone else starts asking the person next to them if they have a spare.

It’s one of those travel rituals that has somehow survived well into the digital age, but it’s finally about to change.

The federal government will spend $56.1 million rolling out the Australia Travel Declaration, a digital replacement for the orange incoming passenger card, following a successful trial involving more than 450,000 passengers on Qantas international flights.

Over the next 12 to 18 months, instead of filling out a paper form on the plane, passengers will be able to complete their arrival declaration online, before arriving in Australia.

It’s a change the tourism industry has been pushing for years and one that’s already commonplace in New Zealand and several of Australia’s Asian neighbours, including Indonesia.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the digital system will reduce manual processing, allow border agencies to collect information earlier and identify security and biosecurity risks.

“When people arrive in Australia, I want them out of the airport and experiencing the best place in the world as fast as possible,” he said.

For now, the pilot is only available on selected Qantas international flights arriving in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

It will be expanded to Perth and Adelaide before the end of the year, and from next year, the program will be rolled out to all Australian international airports and seaports to all travellers.

Travellers who can’t access the web form or app will still be able to use the existing paper arrival card. They’ll just need to remember to pack a pen.

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 12:14pm

Auction clearance rates lift as homes on offer fall

Auction clearance rates across the nation have lifted to a seven-week high, supported to a degree by a lower number of homes on offer.

The property researcher Cotality says its preliminary reading of the national clearance rate lifted to 54.8%, the first time it has been above 50% in three weeks.

However, the number of auctions fell by 8.7% to 1,318 over the weekend. That’s around 8% fewer auctions than at the same time last year.

Melbourne had the most homes under the hammer, 585, with a clearance rate of 56.2%.

Sydney saw the largest move in clearance rates, with the preliminary reading up to 57.5%. That was its highest in ten weeks and well above the 47.3% low three weeks ago

Captial city auction statistics (Cotality)

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 11:35am

Market snapshot

ASX 200 : -0.2% to 8,786 points (live values below)
ASX 200 (Friday): +0.5% to 8,806 points
Australian dollar: -0.3% to 69.31 US cents
Asia: Nikkei -0.9%, Kospit -4.3%, Shanghai flat
Wall Street (Friday): S&P 500 +0.4%, Dow +0.3% Nasdaq +0.3%
Europe (Friday): Dax -0.2%, FTSE +0.2%, Eurostoxx -0.2%
Spot gold: -0.9% to $US4,082/ounce
Oil: Brent futures +4.1% to $US79.12/barrel, WTI futures +4.2% to $U74.41/barrel
Iron ore (Friday): +0.6% to $US99.30/tonne
Copper (LME, Friday): +2.4% to $US13,481/tonne
Bitcoin: -0.8% at $US63,672

Prices current at around 11:30am AEST

Live prices on the major ASX indices:

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 11:26am

ASX starting to fade on war fears

After a bright enough opening, the ASX has started to fade.

At 11:00am AEST:

ASX 200: -0.1% to 8,796 points
All Ordinaries: -0.1% to 8,992 points

With oil prices on the rise again, the energy sector has led the way this morning. The small utilities sector has been weighed down by a slump in AGL (-4.4%) after a broker downgrade from Macquarie.

The key oil and gas producers have all made gains, with the Brazil-focussed Karoon Energy up 2.7% after announcing it was restarting operations at its Bauna Well.

The fuel refiners and retailers have also made gains. Ampol is up 1.6%

Major oil & gas producers/ fuel refiners & retaillers (LSEG, ASX)

The banks, with exception of Westpac (-0.1%), are generally holding their ground. CBA is up 0.2%.

In the mining sector, the big iron ore producers are in demand on the back of spot price increases out of China on Friday. Fortescue is up 1.3%.

The rest of the sector, particularly in gold mining, is under pressure with Northern Star down 2.6%.

Retail is a mixed bag. Non-discretionary stores, such as the supermarkets, are largely lower (Coles is down 2.1%), while discretionary retail is doing better. Wesfarmers has gained 0.7%.

The tech sector is softer. Xero is down 3.2% after its CEO announced she had sold her entire ordinary share holding to pay a tax bill.

The top movers’ list on the ASX 200 is headed by biotech Mesoblast (+6.5%) after receiving a broker upgrade from Bell Potter.

At the base of the bottom movers’ list sits Kingsgate (-14.0%)— hit not only by the general gold miner sell off, but also on the news operations at its Chatree gold mine in Thailand have been significantly impacted by a mechanical fault.

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 11:24am

Fraudsters targeting Telstra customers post-outage

Telstra is warning its customers to be careful about phone calls from people claiming to be representatives of the company, after the telco’s chaotic national outage.

It appears scammers are trying to take advantage of the situation by trying to get customer information.

Here is more from the telco today:

We’ve seen reports of fraudsters calling customers, claiming to be from Telstra and trying to take advantage of the outage.

Please be extra vigilant. If you get a call from someone claiming to be from Telstra asking for your details in light of the outage, hang up and call us directly.

Our teams are working as quickly as possible to resolve any remaining issues.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we’ve worked to put things right. We don’t take that for granted.

Have you got a suspected Telstra scam call? What did the person say? Tell us in the blog or email our journalists on terzon.emilia@abc.net.au

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 11:07am

Telstra tells business customers to complain for compensation

Telstra has put out another update about last week’s outage, which created chaos nationally with triple zero calls dropping out, payments failing and even trains grinding to a halt.

Australia’s biggest telco is reiterating that its system issue (which took Telstra’s systems back 20 years in time!) is now fixed. It is also now urging people to look out for scam calls:

Please be extra vigilant. If you get a call from someone claiming to be from Telstra asking for your details in light of the outage, hang up and call us directly.

The big issue now is compensation. Businesses spoke to my colleague Nassim Khadem last week, with estimates that the cost of the outage could be in the hundreds of millions.

Telstra now says the best way for customers to claim for compensation is by making an online complaint.

It is telling business customers they will need to provide a range of supporting documentation, such as point of sale records, EFTPOS transactions, or invoices.

Were you impacted by the Telstra outage? Email our journalists on khadem.nassim@abc.net.au or terzon.emilia@abc.net.u

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 10:53am

Have you heard from Telstra? Let us know

The Business program is following all the fallout from the Telstra outage last week.

We want to hear from you.

If you were a customer who was affected last week have you heard from Telstra? Have you had a text or an email? What did it say?

Let our reporter know terzon.emilia@abc.net.au

We’re also asking the telco what it’s been doing.

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 10:40am

Xero on the slide after CEO sells off shares

The ASX-listed, NZ-based accounting software business, Xero is on the slide this morning after CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy sold down her stake in the company to help pay an impending tax bill.

In an ASX change of interest notification this morning, the NZ-based firm said Ms Singh Cassidy sold her holding of 29,608 ordinary shares on July 7.

The sale at $74.00/share netted $2,190,992.

At 10:30am Xero was down 3.3% to $70.95/share.

The notification said the sale was for “managing personal tax obligations.”

Ms Singh still has skin in the game at Xero, holding 171,381 Restricted Share Units (a form of performance-based remuneration) and 1,038,308 unlisted options), but no ordinary shares.

Mon 13 Jul 2026 at 10:30am

Musk and Altman tee off again

World’s richest man Elon Musk and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman have been sparring in court and in public for some years now, about AI, the fate of the company and who is ripping the public off.

It’s keenly about the ownership of OpenAI, but there’s more to it.

Musk has taken to calling his competitor “Scam Altman”.