A wild month ended with the share market where it started after the full-year corporate earnings season largely surpassed downbeat expectations and Wall Street rallied towards a likely September rate cut.
The ASX 200 climbed 47 points or 0.58% this afternoon to finish less than a point below where it left off last month. A rebound today in most resource producers and gains for industrials, property trusts and banks outweighed mild down-pressure from healthcare providers, supermarkets and other consumer-facing stocks.
August will be remembered for starting with a record high, immediately followed by the market's worst two-day plunge since December 2015. Anyone who bought the dip would be laughing after the index rallied for 15 of the succeeding 19 sessions, bringing it all the way back up.
Today's rally followed a record high for the Dow overnight and a smaller-than-first-expected impact on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 from an Nvidia earnings update that for once failed to shoot the lights out. The S&P 500 finished near flat. The Nasdaq dipped 0.23%.
