Another rough day for oil, especially US oil futures, failed to make a dent on Wall Street’s optimism about moves to ease lockdowns and re-open small parts of some economies.
US oil futures fell by nearly 25% and the price of global marker crude, Brent ended just under $US20 a barrel.
Fears of a glut of oil, weak demand, and technical reasons with a big oil ETF and its need to rollover current contracts into more distant months, drove the weakness in energy.
Sharemarket investors ignored that and Wall Street ended with solid gains which set up a reasonable start to the day here in Australia with the overnight futures market showing a 23 point gain for the ASX 200 at 6.15 am.
The Dow rose 358.51 points, or 1.51%, to end at 24,133.78; the S&P 500 was up 41.74 points, or 1.47%, to close at 2,878.48 and the Nasdaq jumped 95.64 points, or 1.11%, to finish at 8,730.16.
The small gain in ASX 200 futures contrasts to the 84 point jump on Friday which wasn’t a good guide to the start of trade on Monday thanks to the surprise news from the National Australia Bank of a slide in profit, a whack off the dividend and a $3.5 billion capital raising.
That hit financials, especially the banks, but after a couple of hours of going nowhere, investors rediscovered their confidence and the ASX 200 rose through the rest of the session to end up 78.8 points, or 1.5% at 5321.4. The All Ords was up 87.6 points on Monday to 5388, a gain of 1.6%.
While NAB shares remained in a trading halt, the other big banks slid in response and the financial sector was the only one to end the day in red.
Westpac shares were down 4.4% at $14.66, ANZ Bank dropped 2.3% to $15.65, but Commonwealth Bank dropped down to $57 then ended Monday’s session steady at $58.88.
Going the other way were major industrials with Transurban up 3.7% and Brambles up 4.2%. Healthcare also did well with a gain of 6% in Sonic, shares a 3.7% in Ramsay Healthcare, and 2.6% jump for CSL. Infotech and real estate sectors were up more than 3% after Domain revealed it had gained new bank funding and was cutting costs and salaries. Domain shares were up 13%.
