Australian Market Extends Early Gains In Mid-market

(RTTNews) - The Australian stock market is extending its early gains in mid-market trading on Monday, adding to the gains in the previous two sessions, following the broadly positive cues from Wall Street on Friday. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index is moving well above the 8,800.00 level, with gains in gold miners and financial stocks partially offset by weakness in iron ore miners and a mixed performance in technology and energy stocks.

Traders look ahead to the Reserve Bank of Australia's meeting on Tuesday, where the RBA is widely expected to hold interest rates following a hot inflation report.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index is gaining 58.60 points or 0.67 percent to 8,846.30, after touching a high of 8,871.70 earlier. The broader All Ordinaries Index is up 53.90 points or 0.59 percent to 9,133.10. Australian stocks closed modestly higher on Friday.

Among the major miners, Rio Tinto is slipping almost 2 percent, Fortescue is declining more than 2 percent and BHP Group is losing almost 1 percent, while Mineral Resources is edging up 0.3 percent.

Oil stocks are mixed. Woodside Energy and Santos are edging up 0.1 to 0.5 percent each, while Origin Energy and Beach energy are edging down 0.2 to 0.3 percent each.

Among tech stocks, Afterpay owner Block is edging up 0.1 percent, while Appen and Zip are adding almost 2 percent each. WiseTech Global is losing almost 2 percent and Xero is edging down 0.2 percent.

Gold miners are mostly higher. Evolution Mining is advancing almost 3 percent, Newmont is adding more than 2 percent, Northern Star Resources is gaining almost 1 percent and Resolute Mining is jumping almost 2 percent. Gold Road Resources is suspended.

Among the big four banks, Commonwealth Bank and Westpac are gaining almost 2 percent each, while National Australia Bank and ANZ Banking are gaining more than 1 percent each.

In other news, shares in Novonix are jumping almost 17 percent after the battery and technology company delivered its first mass production of synthetic graphite to a top US client and flagging more.

Shares in New Zealand's Synlait Milk are soaring more than 15 percent after the New Zealand-based dairy processing company agreed to sell its North Island assets to healthcare company Abbott for NZ$307 million or $270 million.

In the currency market, the Aussie dollar is trading at $0.656 on Monday.