The Australian sharemarket surged at the opening bell, buoyed by a robust performance on Wall Street, with the S&P/ASX 200 rising 0.7% to 7632 within the first 10 minutes of trading, partially offsetting Friday’s 1.4% decline. The rally was attributed to Wall Street’s strong performance driven by impressive earnings from tech giants like Microsoft and Google’s parent company Alphabet, with Amazon, AMD, and Apple also anticipated to announce earnings this week, contributing to a 0.9% increase in the local tech sector.
At 11:30am, the S&P/ASX 200 is 0.54 per cent higher at 7,616.60.
The SPI futures are pointing to a rise of 34 points.
Best and worst performers
The best-performing sector is REIT, up 1.56 per cent. The worst-performing sector is Energy, down 0.08 per cent.
The best-performing large cap is CAR Group (ASX:CAR), trading 3.32 per cent higher at $34.25. It is followed by shares in TPG Telecom (ASX:TPG) and Resmed (ASX:RMD).
The worst-performing large cap is Meridian Energy (ASX:MEZ), trading 2.03 per cent lower at $5.32. It is followed by shares in Newmont Corporation (ASX:NEM) and Computershare (ASX:CPU).
Commodities and the dollar
Gold is trading at US$2340.00 an ounce.
Iron ore is 0.6 per cent lower at US$118.15 a tonne.
Iron ore futures are pointing to a 0.9 per cent fall.
One Australian dollar is buying 65.58 US cents.