The Australian sharemarket has opened higher, buoyed by mining and energy stocks, after a rise in oil prices also drove a rally in oil and gas companies on Wall Street overnight.
Energy giants Woodside , Santos , Ampol and Whitehaven Coal lifted, as did Origin Energy and APA .Communications was among the best performing sector, buoyed by CAR Group, the company behind carsales.com.au, which added 2.8 per cent after saying it would close its tyresales.com.au arm after more than a decade of business amid difficulty achieving sustainable profits.
US stock indexes were split on Monday as gains for oil-and-gas producers helped offset drops for Nvidia and other Big Tech companies. Such cuts would give the economy a boost, and the US stock market ran to repeated records last year on the assumption that more are coming after the Fed began lowering rates in September. But inflation has remained above the Fed’s 2 per cent target, and recent reports have suggested a still-solid US economy doesn’t need much help. Questions are growing about whether the Fed will deliver even a single cut in 2025.
Macy’s fell 8.1 per cent after saying it will likely report revenue for the last three months of 2024 that’s at or slightly below the low end of the forecasted range it had earlier given. It’s a potentially discouraging signal about spending during the holiday season after strong spending by US households has helped keep the economy out of a recession.