After a solid lead from Wall Street on Friday night off the back of OK US jobs numbers for September, a good gain was always in prospect yesterday for the ASX with trading volumes expected to be low because of public holidays in NSW, the ACT, Queensland, and South Australia.
Tuesday will be a different story with the country back at work, a session from Wall Street under its belt and more focus on whatever Donald Trump says or tweets in his now disruptive way.
Monday saw the ASX 200 jump 46.5 points, or 0.7% to end at 6563.6. The index closed towards its highs at the close for the session.
The rise yesterday was a touch short of the 55 point gain on the ASX futures market overnight Friday.
That was after index rose 0.4%, or 24.1 points, to close at 6517.1 – on Friday after the big fall on Wednesday and Thursday.
Those losses saw the index notch up its second consecutive weekly decline – the 3% slide was the largest weekly fall in 11 months (since November 2018).
The Reserve Bank rate cut and data on rising house prices had no impact on the market.
Last week’s losses here were steeper than the US where the key S&P 500 index dipped 0.3% over the last week.
Eurozone shares though lost 2.5%, Japanese shares lost 2.1% and the Chinese share market fell 1% albeit it was only open for one day (last Monday).
The Australian dollar traded around 67.50 US cents in quiet Asian dealings, not to far from its close last week.
Comex December gold settled at $US1,512.90 an ounce on Friday, up around 0.4% for the week while Come December silver ended, at $US17.625 an ounce to be down around 0.3%.
Comex December copper ended at $US2.5625 a pound on Friday, down about 1.4% for the week.
The price for 62% Fe iron ore fines ended steady at $US93.08 on Friday, hardly moving last. week because of the Golden WNeek Holiday.
West Texas Intermediate crude for November delivery settled at $US52.81 a barrel on Friday for a loss of 5.8% while Brent, the global benchmark ended ar $US58.37 a barrel, down 4.4% for the week.
