All eyes are on the US as Donald Trump prepares to deliver his inauguration speech and take office in a matter of hours. This gave the ASX a lift on Monday (20 January).
This could be because of a positive conversation between the US’ incoming 47th President and China’s Xi Jinping despite immediate threats of tariffs on US imports from China and other countries.
Trump commented: “I just spoke to Chairman Xi Jinping of China. The call was a very good one for both China and the USA. It is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately.”
“We discussed balancing trade, fentanyl, TikTok, and many other subjects. President Xi and I will do everything possible to make the world more peaceful and safe!”
ANZ says on the commodities front, markets will be watching out for energy policy announcements from the new US administration.
This gave US markets the good old ‘Trump bump’ on Friday. which flowed through to the Australian bourse on Monday as the S&P/ASX 200 closed up 37 points, or 0.45%, to 8,347.40 points.
Over the last five days, the index has gained 0.64% and is currently 1.96% off its 52-week high.
All sectors were in the green except energy, which slid 0.51%. This combined with news that Karoon Energy (ASX:KAR) did not hit any significant hydrocarbon bearing intervals during drilling of its Who Dat West exploration well in the US saw the S&P/ASX 200 company tumble 5.69% to $1.41.
Materials was overtaken by the information technology (0.93%) and the financial (0.66%) sectors but managed to come in ahead of the utilities (0.28%) and industrials (0.09%) sector with a 0.34% tick up.
Gold miner Vault Minerals (ASX:VAU) and uranium producer Paladin Energy (ASX:PDN) also found themselves in the bottom five with losses of 4.06% to $0.36 and 3.71% to $8.31 respectively.
Accelerate Resources (ASX:AX8) topped the small caps with a nearly 29% leap higher to $0.009 on no news. Ioneer (ASX:INR) also held onto its gains today to close up 20.6% at $0.21 after announcing it had locked in a US$996 million loan from the US Department of Energy to support the development
of an onsite processing facility at its Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project in Nevada.
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: Unsplash
