Australian Market Doubles Early Gains In Mid-market

(RTTNews) - The Australian stock market is doubling its early gains in mid-market trading on Monday, reversing 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 well above the 7,700.00 level, with gains across most sectors led by mining and financial stocks.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index is gaining 104.60 points or 1.37 percent to 7,751.10, after touching a high of 7,748.20 earlier. The broader All Ordinaries Index is up 107.40 points or 1.37 percent to 7,961.10. Australian stocks closed significantly lower on Friday.

Among the major miners, BHP Group is gaining more than 2 percent, Fortescue Metals is advancing almost 2 percent, Rio Tinto is adding more than 1 percent and Mineral Resources is surging more than 6 percent.

Oil stocks are mostly higher. Woodside Energy is edging up 0.5 percent, Santos is gaining almost 1 percent and Origin Energy is up more than 1 percent, while Beach energy is losing almost 2 percent.

Among tech stocks, Afterpay owner Block is losing more than 1 percent and Appen is losing almost 2 percent, while Xero is gaining almost 2 percent, WiseTech Global is adding more than 2 percent and Zip is advancing more than 1 percent.

Gold miners are mostly higher. Evolution Mining and Resolute Mining are gaining almost 2 percent each, while Northern Star Resources is edging up 0.2 percent and Newmont is adding more than 4 percent. Gold Road Resources is edging down 0.2 percent.

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

In other news, shares in DroneShield are soaring more than 16 percent after the drone defence company announced it had received a package of five separate contracts totalling $32.2 million.

Shares in Neuren Pharmaceuticals are also skyrocketing almost 18 percent after its upcoming Phase 3 trial for NNZ-2591, a potential treatment for Phelan-McDermid syndrome (PMS), has received the green light from the US FDA to proceed as planned.

In the currency market, the Aussie dollar is trading at $0.630 on Monday.