Australia shares jump 1%, led by gains in mining and financial stocks

  • Australia recorded another day with no new locally acquired cases on Tuesday.
19 Jan, 2021

Australian shares rose more than 1% on Tuesday, on the back of gains among financial and mining stocks, with waste management firm Bingo Industries being the biggest gainer after it received a buyout offer.

The S&P/ASX 200 index was up 1.2% at 6,741.4 by 0208 GMT. The benchmark closed 0.8% lower on Monday.

Bingo Industries soared 23.7% after a private equity firm made a A$2.29 billion ($1.76 billion) play for the company.

Global miner Rio Tinto reported a 2.4% rise in fourth-quarter iron ore shipments, a day after data showed China's economy was one of the few in the world to grow over 2020.

Rio said industrial activity in China is now at pre-coronavirus levels, a boon for miners looking to their top export destination to drive growth as the global economic recovery stumbles ahead.

BHP Group, the world's top miner, edged nearly 1% higher, mirroring gains among the broader mining sector.

BHP will report its second-quarter production results on Wednesday.

Financials rose 1.5%, with Westpac Banking Corp up 2.4%, leading gains among the country's four biggest banks.

"A lot of the early movement seems to be a bounce back from yesterday's losses in the absence of direction from the US markets and lack of big news on the domestic fight against the virus," said James Tao, market analyst at CommSec.

Australia recorded another day with no new locally acquired cases on Tuesday.

Shares of Tyro Payments, while not a constituent of the ASX200, surged around 25% as the payments processor expects to resolve outages that have plagued its terminal fleet since early January and caused a near third plunge in its share price. It also rebuffed a short seller report last week.

In New Zealand, the benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index fell 0.3%, hurt by utility and healthcare stocks.

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