Australian shares rose for a third day as the Dow's burst through 20,000 over the Australia Day break fuelled risk appetite.
At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 39 points or 0.7% higher at 5710 as the benchmark index pushed for its first winning week since early January. Providing momentum today were consumer staples +1.6%, financials +1.3% and utilities +0.8%, offsetting a soft morning for gold stocks -4.4%, metals & mining -1% and materials -0.6%.
The local market played catch-up after two nights of trade in the US saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average take out the long-anticipated 20,000 milestone and the S&P 500 set a new record before easing 0.07% overnight.
"The market likes what they have heard from Trump and his administration…where the rhetoric and actions highlighted a sheer urgency, purpose and drive to push the U.S. economy forward and this has traders putting risk back on the table," Chris Weston, chief market strategist at IG, told CNBC.
Many Asian markets, including China, were closed for the start of week-long Lunar New Year holidays. Hong Kong's Hang Seng dipped 0.12% and Japan's Nikkei rose by the same percentage. Dow futures were recently down nine points or 0.04%.
Crude oil futures edged up three cents or 0.06% this morning to US$53.81 a barrel. Gold futures were $4.10 or 0.34% weaker at US$1,188.40 an ounce. The dollar was buying 75.3 US cents.
5800 now looks firmly in sight for the XJO as a short-term target. After that, 6000 may come into play, assuming that the market continues to overlook White House follies in favour of the market-friendly stuff. Will be interesting to see how long the market's love affair with Trump lasts. One thing I've learned over the years is that pretty much every market phase takes longer to play out than you think it will. Being right too early can work out just as expensive as being wrong. Trading: solid wage from the partial rebound in TAW. Scraped a pittance out of NST but didn't get the entry or exit right.
