Off the wire
Cseh, Hosszu named Hungary's athletes of the year  • Ecuador denies requests of soccer leaders involved in FIFA scandal  • "Navigational error" leads to U.S. sailors' intrusion into Iranian waters: Pentagon chief  • 2nd LD Writethru: NASA awards space station cargo contracts to 3 private companies  • Indonesian terror attack "expected" for some time: Aust'n Foreign Minister  • Feature: Cuban migrants with children waiting to board next flight out of Costa Rica  • Cuban wrestler Lopez aims for third Olympic gold  • O'Sullivan beats Selby to reach Masters semifinals  • Australia will not increase military assistance despite Jakarta terror attack  • CEOs working to bolster capability in 2016: survey  
You are here:   Home

Australian market opens with relief rally

Xinhua, January 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

Aussie stocks have bounced at the open on Friday, spurned by strong offshore leads, however some analysts are worried if gains will be sustained.

At 1010 AEDT on Friday, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was UP 78.4 points, or 1.60 percent, at 4,987.8, while the broader All Ordinaries index was UP 75.7 points, or 1.52 percent, at 5,039.8.

The Australian market has posted a broad-based rally at the open on Friday after Wall Street rallied on a promising start to the earning season, a move that was well overdue from the oversold nature of global markets.

"The markets have been extremely oversold. Today is only the second positive session in 2016," Bell Direct equities analyst Julia Lee said.

However sustainability remains a question given ongoing concerns of base-commodity and oil oversupply and self-perpetuating fears of China's equities.

"The big unknown today is whether we have seen a sustainable bounce in Chinese equities and whether yesterday's gains can be held onto," IG market analyst Angus Nicholson said.

"Some sense of stability does seem to have been wrestled into the Chinese yuan this week, but the Chinese equity markets have been more immune to muscular shows of state intervention."

At the open, ANZ is up 2.04 percent, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia added 1.40 percent, the National Australia Bank gained 1.55 percent and Westpac is 1.01 percent higher.

BHP Billiton surged 5.17 percent despite announcing a 4.9 billion U.S. dollar write down in its U.S. oil and gas business, rival Rio Tinto is 4.07 percent stronger however gold miner Newcrest has dropped 2.53 percent.

Oil Search is up 3.04 percent, Santos bounced 5.24 percent and Woodside Petroleum is 3.01 percent stronger on gains in benchmark crude overnight.

Wesfarmers and Woolworths are 0.66 and 1.13 percent higher respectively.

Qantas edged 0.86 percent higher and Telstra gained 0.93 percent. Endit