Wall Street is breathing a massive sign of relief, with US stocks closing at their best levels this season. The trading floor noted less tension over North Korea, and the S&P 500 experienced its best day since April, rising 1.08 per cent, before it ended 1 per cent higher for the day.
Tech stocks led the charge while the Nasdaq outperformed again, and ended the session over 1.3 per cent higher after shares in Tesla, Amazon and Facebook all rose.
The Dow Jones however added over 135 points with Apple and Boeing added the most gains.
On the commodities front, the oil price has fallen over 2 per cent on the back of weak Chinese data.
To local economic news out today We can expect the RBA to release its board minutes from its Monetary Policy Meeting.
Investor will be eyeing comments about the high Australian dollar as well as 'liaison' with businesses or retailers. That is due at 11.30am.
Also out the same time, the ABS will reveal the new vehicle sales for July. So it will be interesting to see how markets react to those pieces of economic news.
MarketsWall Street closed higher on Monday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.62 per cent to close at 21,994, the S&P 500 added 1.00 per cent to close at 2,466 and the NASDAQ rose 1.34 per cent to close at 6,340.
European markets closed higher: London’s FTSE added 0.6 per cent, Paris rose 1.2 per cent and Frankfurt added 1.26 per cent.
Asian markets closed mixed: Tokyo’s Nikkei fell 0.98 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.4 per cent, and China’s Shanghai Composite rose 0.9 per cent.
And back home, the Australian share market closed higher on Monday: The S&P/ASX 200 Index closed 37 points up to finish at 5,730 or 0.65 per cent up for the day.
On the futures market the SPI is 21 points up.
To company newsDowner EDI
(ASX:DOW) has again extend its takeover offer of Spotless Group
(ASX:SPO) by another week. It comes as the engineering and infrastructure company ramped up its holding in the integrated facility company, Spotless Group to over 87 per cent. Downer’s extended offer of $1.15 cash per share will now close on Monday 21 August 2017 at 7pm unless again extended. Shares in Downer EDI
(ASX:DOW) last traded at 2.55 per cent higher on Monday to $6.84.
Reporting season. We into the third week of reporting this week, but today, we can watch out for Challenger
(ASX:CGF), Charter Hall Retail Reit
(ASX:CQR), Dominos Pizza Enterprises (DMP), FlexiGroup
(ASX:FXL) and GPT
(ASX:GPT) which are set to report financial results today.
To ex-dividendsTwo companies are going ex-dividend today: Genworth Mortgage Insurance Australia
(ASX:GMA) is paying 14 cents fully franked and Magellan Financial Group
(ASX:MFG) is paying 47.2 cents fully franked.
CurrenciesOne Australian Dollar at 7:45AM was buying 78.54 US cents, 60.60 Pence Sterling, 86.09 Yen and 66.69 Euro cents.
Commodities Gold has fallen $6.20 to $US1,288 an ounce.
Silver is steady at $US17.07 an ounce.
Oil has dropped $1.31 to $US47.66 a barrel.
