A post-correction rebound in the United States has primed the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) for a third successive day of capital appreciation on Tuesday.
The futures market provided an early indication of how strongly the ASX would open with the S&P/ASX 200 March share price index contract sitting 53 points (+0.67%) higher than the previous settlement at 7,856.00 points at 9:30 am AEDT (10:30 pm GMT Monday).
The impetus came from a bounce back from tariff-inspired selling on Wall Street where the Dow Jones Industrial Average put on 0.9%, the S&P 500 0.6% and the Nasdaq Composite 0.3 on Monday (Tuesday AEDT).
February retail sales data partly cheered investors in the U.S. who had witnessed the fall in the S&P 500 become a correction last week with a drop of more than 10% from its record high in late February.
Chief CommSec Economist Ryan Felsman said the Australian sharemarket was set to open higher and extend the gains of the last two trading days, helped by the absence of new headlines about U.S. tariffs.
He said energy and mining stocks should be boosted by higher oil, gold and copper prices but market conditions would remain volatile.
“I think we’re going to be in for a choppy week,” Felsman said.
“On the one hand we have positive sentiment from Chinese stimulus measures that focus on consumption given that people tend to save rather than spend but the property market is still very challenging in China.”
Reserve Bank of Australia Assistant Governor (Economic) Sarah Hunter is speaking today while Credit Corp, Reece and SEEK shares trade ex-dividend, according to CommSec.
On the bond markets, the 10-year and two-year Treasury yields rose 0.48% and 0.29% to 4.431% and 3.781% respectively.
