By Kumar Tanishk <\/p>\n
Aug 3 (Reuters) – Australian shares rose on Monday, led by banks, healthcare and gold stocks as U.S. President Donald Trump’s \u200cremarks on Iran and fresh hopes of reopening the Strait of \u200cHormuz lifted sentiment. <\/p>\n
The S&P\/ASX 200 advanced 0.5% to 9,019.30 points, carrying over momentum from July – \u200bits strongest monthly gain in five months. <\/p>\n
Over the weekend, Trump said that Iran and other Middle Eastern nations had requested time to finalise a deal for the “immediate, complete and total” reopening of the vital strait. <\/p>\n
“The market is treating the \u200clatest Middle East developments as \u2060a potential positive, but not yet a game-changer,” said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade. <\/p>\n
“Until there’s clearer \u2060evidence that any ceasefire can hold, risk appetite is likely to remain measured and selective.” <\/p>\n
Leading gains, financials rose 0.4% with three among the “Big Four” advancing between 0.2% \u200band 0.8%. <\/p>\n
Still, \u200binvestors remain wary that renewed geopolitical \u200btensions could keep oil prices elevated \u200cand delay interest rate cuts, leaving the focus on the major banks’ challenging operating environment rather than earnings surprises, Waterer said. <\/p>\n
Markets are pricing in almost no chance of the RBA raising its 4.35% cash rate next week, with little expectation of a move in September. [0#AUDIRPR] <\/p>\n
Healthcare subindex and consumer staples both \u200cgained about 1% each. <\/p>\n
4DMedical led gains in \u200bthe healthcare sector, while Treasury Wine Estates topped \u200bthe consumer staples pack. <\/p>\n
Gold miners \u200brose 0.7% on the back on higher bullion prices. [GOL\/] <\/p>\n
Limiting \u200cgains, energy stocks lost 1.2% to mark \u200btheir weakest session \u200bin a week, keeping with declining oil prices. [O\/R] <\/p>\n
Oil majors Woodside Energy and Santos shed 1.4% and 1.9%, respectively. <\/p>\n
Investors are now turning their attention \u200bto the August earnings \u200cseason for insights into the health of corporate Australia. <\/p>\n
New Zealand’s benchmark \u200bS&P\/NZX 50 index advanced 0.6% to 13,774.93 points. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kumar Tanishk \u200bin Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kumar Tanishk Aug 3 (Reuters) – Australian shares rose on Monday, led by banks, healthcare and gold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[164013,114,80803,521,85,87,46,12521,114994,182182],"class_list":["post-572951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-australian-shares","tag-business","tag-gold-stocks","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-tim-waterer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}