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Wall Street returned to mostly rally mode on Monday with the Nasdaq leading the gains, posting a rise of 0.6% at the closing bell while the S&P500 added 0.4% but the Dow Jones ended the day down 0.1%. Tesla shares popped 5.6% on Monday amid reports President Elect Donald Trump’s team is working on ways to ease self-driving regulations, while Nvidia shares lost 1.3% as investors await earnings out of the semiconductor giant.

Across Europe overnight, markets closed mixed in the region as investors await key inflation data out later this week from the Eurozone and the UK, while a slew of CPI readings are also due out this week across Europe. The STOXX 600 fell 0.1% on Monday, Germany’s DAX closed flat, the French CAC rose 0.12% and, in the UK, the FTSE100 ended the day up 0.6%.Over in the Asia region, markets closed mixed to start the week as investors await key economic data out in the region this week including Japan’s inflation data and China’s loan prime rate.

China’s CSI index ended Monday’s session down almost half a percent, Japan’s Nikkei fell 1.09%, South Korea’s Kospi index gained 2.16% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.82%.The local market started the week in positive territory with a 0.2% gain as investors hope further stimulus out of Beijing will increase demand for Aussie exports especially in the mining space. Consumer staples and utilities stocks led the rally on Monday with gains of 1.95% and 1.82% respectively, while health and tech, the two growth sectors, ended Monday’s session with losses of 0.88% and 0.79% respectively.

Russia’s most recent move to cut exports of enriched uranium to the U.S. boosted local uranium miners on Monday, with Boss Energy rising 7.3% while Paladin Energy rose over 5%.Gold miners also felt some relief yesterday as the post-election USD rally eased and the gold price rebounded to trade 1.2% higher at US$2592.95/ounce. Northern Star Resources, Evolution Mining and Gold Road Resources each ended Monday’s session in the green.

What to watch today:

• Ahead of Tuesday’s trading session on the ASX the SPI futures are anticipating the local market to open the new trading day 0.11% higher. We may see investors react to the release of the RBA’s latest meeting minutes out today in Australia as investors will digest the RBA’s remarks and determine if rate cuts are on the horizon.
• On the commodities front this morning, oil is trading 2.63% higher at US$68.79/barrel, gold is up 1.87% at US$2610/ounce and iron ore is down 0.6% at US$101.63/tonne.
• The Aussie dollar has further weakened against the greenback to buy US$0.64, 100.61 Japanese Yen, 51.13 British Pence and NZ$1.10.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter has initiated coverage of Alfabs Australia (ASX:AAL) with a buy rating and a price target of 40cps as Bell Potter’s analyst sees this is a good buying opportunity for the diversified Australian industrial services group given it is relatively undervalued with an attractive NPAT and compound annual growth rate outlook of 21.8% p.a. over FY24-27.
• Trading Central has identified a bearish signal on IRESS (ASX:IRE) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 48-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may fall from the close of $9.48 to the range of $8.95 to $9.05 according to standard principles of technical analysis.