Australian Market Slashes Early Gains In Mid-market

(RTTNews) - The Australian stock market is slashing its early gains in mid-market trading on Monday, recouping the losses in the previous session, following the broadly positive cues from Wall Street on Friday. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index is moving up to near the 9,000.00 mark, with gains across most sectors led by mining and technology stocks. Financial stocks were the only weak spot.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index is gaining 16.60 points or 0.19 percent to 8,984.00, after touching a high of 9,054.50 earlier. The broader All Ordinaries Index is up 22.00 points or 0.24 percent to 9,256.30. Australian stocks closed notably lower on Friday.

Among the major miners, and Rio Tinto are adding more than 2 percent and Mineral Resources is advancing more than 4 percent, while BHP Group and Fortescue are gaining almost 3 percent each.

Oil stocks are mostly higher. Woodside Energy and Santos are adding more than 1 percent each, while Beach energy is gaining more than 2 percent. Origin Energy is losing almost 1 percent.

Among tech stocks, Afterpay owner Block is surging more than 6 percent, Zip is soaring more than 7 percent and Appen is advancing almost 6 percent, while WiseTech Global is edging down 0.4 percent and Xero is losing more than 1 percent.

Gold miners are mostly higher. Northern Star Resources is adding more than 3 percent, Newmont is up more than 1 percent and Evolution Mining is gaining almost 3 percent, while Resolute Mining is losing more than 6 percent and Gold Road Resources is edging down 0.2 percent.

Among the big four banks, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, ANZ Banking and Westpac are losing more than 1 percent each. In other news, shares in Nuix are diving more than 8 percent after the software maker slipped to a loss for the full year, due to higher legal costs and signing fewer multi-year customer contracts.

Shares in Reece are tumbling more than 15 percent after reporting downbeat results as weak housing markets in Australia, New Zealand and the US weighed on demand.

Shares in Ansell are soaring more than 10 percent after the health and safety products company reported upbeat results for the full year.

In the currency market, the Aussie dollar is trading at $0.647 on Monday.