A rally in tech stocks last Friday saw the US markets rise, with the positive sentiment flowing through to the Australian markets to kick off the new trading week.
Tech giants and crypto stocks were the beneficiaries of Mike Johnson retaining his position as speaker of the House of Representatives on the first ballot. Johnson is a supporter of President-elect Donald Trump.
Markets were also supported by positive manufacturing data, with the US Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Index hitting a nine-month high of 49.3 in December – up from 48.4 a month earlier.
The S&P/ASX 200 climbed 28.80 points, or 0.35%, to 8,279.30 points as of 10.31am AEDT. The index is virtually unchanged over the past five days, but is currently 2.76% below its 52-week high.
Six of the 11 sectors advanced, with utilities the top performing sector gaining 0.10% this morning and up 0.36% over the past five days.
Materials, however, slid 0.64%, while energy edged back a slight 0.01%. The bottom five were all miners, led by Bellevue Gold (ASX:BGL) with a 13.1% retreat to $0.995.
The gold miner revised its 2025 financial year production guidance down to between 150,000 and 165,000 ounces, from 165,000 to 180,000 ounces previously, despite it being on track to reach an annual production rate of 200,000 ounces from early in the June quarter.
Aluminium producer Alcoa (ASX:AAI) dipped 4.64% to $57.92, Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) dropped 1.83% to $115.32, gold major Newmont (ASX:NEM) decreased 1.63% to $61.15 and BHP (ASX:BHP) retreated 1.54% to $39.15.
Lynas Rare Earths (ASX:LYC) was an outlier, advancing 3.48% to $6.84.
The S&P/ASX200 is Australia’s leading share market index and contains the top 200 ASX-listed companies in terms of market capitalisation, and accounts for about 80% of the country’s equity market. The index is designed to measure the performance of the 200 largest index-eligible stocks listed on the ASX by float-adjusted market capitalisation.
It is recognised as the institutional investable benchmark in the country.
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: ASX
