ASX opens higher, gold miners lead rally
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More news: Australian shares opened in positive territory with gold mining stocks rallying for the fourth consecutive day. The benchmark ASX 200 index was up 80.4 points or 0.94% to 8,672 at 10:39am AEDT with 10 of the 11 sectoral indices opening in the green.
Materials (+2.08%) was the top performing sector across the ASX 200, following consecutive gains on the back of the gold rally.
Alcoa Corporation (+5.62%), Newmont (+5.01%), Emerald Resources (+4.97%) and Liontown Resources (+4.68%) led the top ASX 200 gainers.
Energy (-0.48%) was the only in the red at the open, dragged by a slump in oil giants Woodside Energy (-1.29%) and Santos (-1.83%) on the back of a 1.49% drop in Brent crude overnight.
Australian shares to climb as Dow hits record high, Oracle leads Nasdaq losses
The news: Australian shares are set to climb at the open after the Dow hit a record high overnight, while a selloff in software giant Oracle helped drag the tech-heavy Nasdaq lower.
The numbers: Updated at 7:30am AEDT:
- ASX futures: up 93 points, or 1.08%, to 8,684
- Wall Street: Dow Jones up 1.38%, S&P 500 up 0.22% and Nasdaq down 0.31%.
- Europe: CAC 40 up 0.79%, DAX up 0.68% and FTSE 100 up 0.49%
- Spot gold: up 1.00% to USD4,267 per ounce
- Oil prices: Brent down 1.25% to USD61.43/bbl and US WTI down 1.31% to USD57.70/bbl
- AUD: down 0.16% at 66.65 US cents
- Bitcoin: down 0.80% to USD91,264.
The context: The Dow reached a fresh record high after the US Federal Reserve delivered a widely expected interest rate cut and 2026 outlook on Thursday morning AEDT.
However, the Nasdaq dropped after Oracle lost around 11% following its second-quarter earnings report, which forecast an extra USD15 billion ($22.5 billion) in annual spending compared to previous guidance.
The selloff sparked caution across other megacap stocks, with AI-related heavyweights such as Alphabet (-2.6%) and Nvidia (-1.9%) sliding.
The source: Reuters
