Long queues of cars are lining the streets around petrol stations across Australia.

However, authorities say there is a steady supply of fuel in Australia, with fuel companies accused of taking advantage of people’s anxieties by hiking prices.

My colleagues Gian De Poloni, Madigan Landry and Neve Brissenden have more.

The ASX has finished the day lower, down 1.9% at 8,901 points, along with all sectors.

Overall, the market had 32 stocks gaining, 5 unchanged and 163 stocks in the red.

When looking at the sectors, all ended lower, with Technology the top mover, down 0.2%.

Materials finished at the bottom; down 2.9%, followed by Consumer Staples; down 2.3%, and then Financials; down 2%.

Among companies, the top movers were BlueScope Steel, up 2.6%, and Xero, up 2.4%.

It wasn’t a good day for Silex Systems, which fell 9.7%, followed by Paladin Energy, which was 7.7% lower.

The Australian dollar is also down 0.4% at 70.02 US cents.

Polling company Roy Morgan has just put out it’s annual survey of Australia’s most trusted and least trusted brands.

Hardware giant Bunnings has come out as Australia’s most trusted brand once again. It’s been in this spot for years now! Aldi and Kmart took out the second and third spots, which they have both also held since last year.

Roy Morgan’s CEO Michele Levine notes that three major banks, CBA, NAB and Westpac are also back in its top 20 most trusted brands polling, “suggesting key parts of the banking sector have recovered from the Financial Services Royal Commission”.

On the flip side, Woolworths has held onto its wooden spoon, with the supermarket giant retaining the dubious spot of Australia’s #1 least trusted brand. Woolies and its rival Coles ended up with massive consumer mistrust after allegations of price gouging on groceries during the years of high inflation.

Interestingly, Coles is still in the top 20 least trusted brands, but its position has eased a little to #4. Coles just battled it out in court with with the ACCC over allegations of fake discounts on Down Down promotions, and the judgement on that case could impact further how consumers see its brand.

Notably, Australians have also lost faith in the telco Optus, after its fatal Triple Zero outage towards the end of 2025. Two deaths have been connected to its loss of emergency services in four states over 14 hours in September.

In December alone, after the outage, Roy Morgan’s poll found Optus was the country’s least trusted brand. “Another reminder of how quickly operational failure can convert into reputational damage,” Ms Levine notes.

You can learn more about the results in this YouTube video. And tell us in the comments, which brands do you trust and mistrust the most, and why?

The conflict in the Middle East has shut down key trade routes, impacting $15 billion in Australian trade.

A number of meat processors across Australia have halted exports to the Middle East amid the ongoing war in that region.

Farmers heading into the cropping season are expecting a fertiliser price hike.

Read more on the coverage of Emily Middleton, Lucy Thackray and Belinda Varischetti.

The Australian share market has posted a hefty fall, ending the session down 1.9% for both the ASX 200 and the All Ordinaries.

Gold’s sell-off this week is a reminder to investors that, even with rising demand for safe havens, the ultimate safe-haven asset isn’t immune if market forces work against it, says Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at eToro.

“The most immediate pressure is coming from a repricing of interest rate expectations.

“As recently as last Friday, markets were fully pricing in two rate cuts from the Fed this year, but surging energy prices tied to the escalating Iran conflict have forced a dramatic rethink, with traders now seeing just 80% odds of a single cut.”

Meanwhile, a stronger US dollar and rising bond yields are a classic double headwind for gold, he says, adding that the world is seeing similarities to what happened in 2022.

“When Russia invaded Ukraine, oil prices surged, inflation spiked globally, and the Fed responded by hiking rates aggressively, which strengthened the dollar and sent gold lower for much of that year.”

Mr Gilbert says, however, the structural case for gold hasn’t changed.

“Central banks have been buying at a historic pace for three consecutive years, concerns around fiscal deficits remain firmly in place, and the geopolitical backdrop is arguably more uncertain now than at any point this year.

“Gold is still up almost 20% year to date, and with the conflict in the Middle East not seemingly letting up for now, buyers may not be gone for too long.”

The physical gold market is also facing real disruption, the analyst says.

“The UAE, one of the world’s most important regions for the global gold trade, closed its airspace over the weekend, and several commercial airlines have suspended operations, effectively grounding shipments of gold and silver that rely on the cargo holds of passenger aircraft.

“With land transport seen as too risky for high-value metal in the region, shipments to and from Dubai have been paused indefinitely.

“That supply bottleneck doesn’t show up in the spot price immediately, but it adds a layer of tightness that could support prices once the selling pressure eases.”

Mr Gilbert highlights that the key question for investors is whether this is temporary pressure driven by a pushback on rate cut expectations and dollar strength, or the start of a more sustained pullback.

“Given the longer-term drivers of the rally remain intact, this looks more like a short-term retracement rather than the end of this rally.

“Duration of the conflict remains the critical variable. If the Middle East situation extends for several weeks, there is ample scope for gold to challenge its record high above $US5,595 once the dust settles.”

Nobel prize–winning economist Joel Mokyr says while humanity faces unprecedented existential threats, from climate change and labour shortages, artificial intelligence could help deliver the next wave of scientific and economic progress.

Speaking at the ASIC Symposium in Sydney on Wednesday, Professor Mokyr described himself as firmly in the pro-AI camp.

“I’m an AI boy,” he told the audience, “I believe AI is a huge opportunity.”

While acknowledging concerns about the technology, he argued AI would become an extraordinarily powerful tool for scientific research.

“I see the dangers; I see the concerns … but what AI will do is be an incredibly powerful tool for scientific research,” he said.

Professor Mokyr compared its potential impact to the advent of the digital computer.

“The digital computer has been a major source of scientific change,” he explained.

“There is not a single branch of human inquiry that doesn’t use computers today … AI will do the same.”

Professor Mokyr added AI would allow researchers to do things previously unimaginable and to do them faster.

“We can do things we could never do before. We can do it fast, and hopefully we can rely on it,” he said.

“In that sense, the future of science is not behind us, it’s before us.”

And what comes next?

“You ain’t seen nothing yet. The best is yet to come,” Professor Mokyr said.

Global investment in artificial intelligence is projected to reach $3 trillion by 2026.

In Australia, the federal government has committed more than $460 million in existing funding to AI and related initiatives under its National AI Plan.

Currently, the ASX 200 is tracking for its worst fall since February 6, when it ended just over 2% lower.

If it exceeds that, it could be the worst fall since April last year, when the benchmark index lost 2.4% in the wake of Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcement.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black has told The Business it’s important for Australia to try to manage what it can control as the war in Iran escalates.

Watch more here.

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Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon says he is surprised at the “benign” reaction in financial markets over the conflict in the Middle East, and it may take a “couple of weeks” for investors to more fully digest the impacts.

“I look at the market reaction, and I’m actually surprised that the market reaction has been more benign given the magnitude of this, as you might think,” Mr Solomon has said in a speech at a business summit in Sydney.

The CEO says  markets tend to react in a muted way to geopolitical events, unless they had a direct impact on economic growth.

“There’s a cumulative effect of everything that’s happening and a much harsher reaction. Up to this point, we haven’t seen that cumulative effect,” he says.

“But it’s very hard to speculate because there is so much that is unknown at this point.

“I think it’s gonna take a couple of weeks for markets to really digest the implications of what has happened both in the short term and medium term, and I can’t speculate as to how that would play out.”

Oil prices have spiked as the widening conflict stoked supply worries, exacerbating investor concerns about inflation.

Global stock indexes have slumped while the US dollar has strengthened as investors sold riskier assets and flocked to traditional safe havens.

However, Wall Street losses have been relatively mild, with the S&P 500 down less than 1% this week after paring early losses into the close on both trading days.

Mr Solomon says a combination of factors, including an easing monetary cycle and a significant relaxation of regulatory practices, has helped keep the US economy in solid shape.

“Let us put aside what’s going on in the Middle East at the moment,” he adds.

“We have a confluence of strong macro tailwinds that make the economic growth trajectory of the United States, I think, quite compelling.”

Reporting with Reuters

Feeling the pinch amid the increasing cost of living?

My colleague Joshua Boscaini has some updates about the grocery price ban.

Here’s his reporting from Canberra:

Mayo MP Rebekha Sharkie has asked whether the government would urgently consider bringing forward a ban on excessive pricing of groceries.

The federal government has introduced rules to prohibit very large retailers from charging prices that are excessive when compared to the cost of supply.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the government will only go as quickly as it can, and is trying to get the final details right.

“What we’re trying to do is to strengthen the arrangements as soon as we can because we know that supermarket transparency, we know that supermarket competition, is potentially a big part of this challenge,” he says.

There is no relief from volatility or from headlines linking war, rates, and private credit concerns, according to BNY, a US-based financial services firm.

“Yesterday was the markets’ denial phase. Today is the no relief phase,” it says.

“There is significant room for global market corrections to continue, as risk has been built up over the last three years of global growth.

“The problem for offsetting equity pain is that fixed income is more correlated to than divergent from equity risks.”

The firm adds that inflation stemming from energy supply shocks is expected to stymie central bankers’ ability to ease and encourage hawks to act.

“The most important evidence for such came from RBA Governor Michele Bullock overnight, who made it clear that another hike is likely.

“AUD’s weakness, regardless of RBA tightening risk, highlights the search for safety in a world where uncertainty abounds.”

Coming home, all 11 sectors are down today along with the ASX 200 Index.

Top movers:

• BlueScope Steel, +2.6%
• Xero, +2.2%
• Mesoblast, +1.7%
• TechnologyOne Ltd, +1.7%
• News Corp, +1.6%

Bottom movers:

• Silex Systems Ltd, -8.9%
• Paladin Energy, -7.4%
• West African Resources, -7.1%
• Magellan Financial Group, -7%
• Generation Development Group, -7%

Here are a few photos out of Tokyo, as the Nikkei is among the global stock markets rocked as the Middle East war continues.

And yes, green (counterintuitively to those of us used to the ASX) means down on Asian stock markets.

The falls are deepening across the region, with South Korea’s Kospi 200 down 10%.

Earlier, the Korea Exchange activated circuit breakers, pausing trade to limit market volatility.

Today’s national accounts numbers likely lean towards the RBA holding the cash rate steady at 3.85% at its meeting in March and waiting until after the quarterly inflation data is released at the end of April, according to IG market analyst Tony Sycamore.

“Australia’s Q4 GDP figures came in with a decent kick today,” he says.

“That said, there was some softness lurking in the underlying details.

“Household consumption grew a subdued 0.3% QoQ, while the household saving ratio climbed to 6.9% (the highest since September 2022).

“This is an indication that cost-of-living pressures are still biting — Aussies are channelling extra income into savings rather than spending it.”

For the RBA’s upcoming March meeting, this print takes some pressure off the need for an immediate rate hike, he adds.

“That said, the board will stay laser-focused on how the conflict in the Middle East continues to evolve and the risks it brings in terms of a supply shock feeding into higher inflation.”

Capital Economics is sticking by its call that another interest rate hike is on its way, after the latest economic growth figures.

its latest note said further monetary policy tightening remains likely, given growth has risen further above trend.

Senior economist Abhijit Surya described the underlying details of the fourth quarter data as a “mixed bag” but suspected “the RBA will still be concerned that growth is running above potential in Australia”.

He said the 0.4% quarterly rise in private demand “isn’t exactly the signpost of a roaring economy”, noting that public demand and the building back up of inventories did the “heavy lifting” in the period.

“Even so, we would note that the headline figures may be overstating the weakness in private demand,” he wrote.

“Household consumption was subdued in part because government electricity rebates lowered spending on electricity.”

He also noted the increase in the household savings rate to a three-year high of 6.9%.

“If inflationary pressures continue to remain strong, there’s still a strong case for it to hike rates again before long.”

• ASX 200: -1.9% to 8,916 points
• Australian dollar: -0.2% to 70.15 US cents
• Wall Street: Dow Jones (-0.8%), S&P 500 (-1%), Nasdaq (-1%)
• Europe: Stoxx 600 (-3.1%), DAX (-3.4%), FTSE (-2.8%)
• Gold: +1.6% to $US5,168/ounce
• Silver: +3.4% to $US84.82/ounce
• Oil (Brent crude): +0.9% at $US82.16/barrel
• Iron ore: -0.2% to $US99.40/tonne
• Bitcoin: +0.4% to $US68,302

 Price current around 1:50pm AEDT