8639. It’s now a magic number. It now represents the new record high for the ASX200, set just after the session opened on 11 June 2025. It's definitely worth celebrating, but we still need to watch out for these forces at play.

By the numbers: how the record-breaking day played out on the ASX

The market opened at 8538 points, before hitting its new record high at 8639 a mere 15 minutes later. After that, many decided it was time to push back from the table and trim their positions, taking value where they could.

Other than the record intraday trading figure, 11 June on the Australian market was like any other. It was full of encouraging climbs and tumbling lows set against the typical hum of the ASX. 

By the middle of the day, newswires were reporting that real estate stocks saw their fortunes climb, while the IT sector lagged behind. 

Companies with their names in the headlines saw tumultuous results, including Monash Healthcare, which inexplicably has somehow transferred the wrong embryo into the wrong woman for the second time since April 2025. Its price has now more than halved since January. 

Another headline-getter was Qantas, which announced plans to shelve its Qantas Asia brand and return its planes into the Australian fleet due to low demand on its Singapore-based routes. That saw a downturn of around 1.3% by the close of the session.

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By the end of the session on Tuesday, the ASX200 closed exactly one point above its initial open at 8539, ready to do it all again tomorrow. Just another day on the market merry-go-round, really.

So what really set the market into a record-breaking mood on Tuesday? What else, but the secret ingredient that powers most markets into record territory. 

Optimism.

What could bring the market back down?

Valentine's Day - 14 February - saw the ASX hit its last fresh record high of 8557 points. As we know, less than two weeks later, the highs we were all celebrating at the time would all be gone as Trump and his placard of global tariffs threw the world economy into a tailspin.

In just two weeks, the market went from popping corks to watching the most precipitous fall in global exchanges since COVID-19 forced everyone behind closed doors. Snap-back to the present and you find that we're still facing similar challenges abroad that could take back our precious records in a heartbeat.

The ASX200's rise today was attributed mostly to positive progress in talks between China and the US. Both parties managed to get through their third full-day of negotiations without someone deciding to throw their toys out of the pram, and so the market rejoices in what might be a return to positive progress.

But remember: we're dealing with some of the most unpredictable and reactionary political forces we've ever seen. One cross-word could see either side walk out. And any market-watcher can assume that a precipitous fall in global markets would follow in the wake of said scorned diplomats.

But even if those talks do go swimmingly, there are still problems elsewhere. The US/China talks are happening in London, which also just copped some pretty rough headlines as the market opened yesterday.

Just up the road from the negotiating table, the UK was announcing a new record of its own. New data that showed the unemployment rate was at its highest in four years. And the rate of Britons out of a job continues to accelerate, following seven straight monthly declines in the number of patrolled employees in the economy. Cue a falling Sterling, and signs that rate cuts are coming in August. 

Follow London's longitude across the pond and you'll be met with loud noises as the military and National Guard seek to quell rioting in Los Angeles: one of the world's largest economies in a single city, ready to blow like a powder keg over Trump's heavy-handed military interventions. And if that wasn't bad enough, other so-called "Sanctuary Cities" staged support protests of their own.

And all this is set against the backdrop of doom and gloom from the World Bank, which says that global economic growth growth ain't going to be what we all see in our Christmas stockings for 2025.

Markets used to be that if you could read the trends and factor in the fundamentals, you could read the market. Now it's a more complicated game of geopolitical Jenga than most of us can comprehend. 

What should we do next? Consult the gospel of Munger

If you're in a pickle, and need some wisdom, I often seek sanctuary in the philosophies of Warren Buffett's right hand man, Charlie Munger. 

Munger has two great quotes I like here, and the first is about bull markets. While we may not be in a traditional bull market right now, it still bears itself out:

“Bull markets go to people’s heads," Munger says. "If you’re a duck on a pond, and it’s rising due to a downpour, you start going up in the world. But you think it’s you, not the pond," he concludes. The market showing signs of optimism is terrific, especially in an age when it feels as if lurching from crisis-to-crisis. But like the duck rising in the market downpour, we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back for getting through it. The market continues to go up - as markets so often do in the long-term - and we should keep a close eye on the waterline as we go.

And finally, Munger knows that trading is two-sides of a coin: there are the up times, and the down times. And just because we're up right now, doesn't mean we'll be up forever.

Again, from the gospel of Munger, "capitalism without failure is like religion without hell". Simplified? 

For that we go over to Sir Isaac Newton, "what goes up, must come down".

For what it's worth, the ASX200 is probably set to rise again today.