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The main insurance giants have also ended higher at the close of trade on Monday in the wake of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
Although the three insurers recorded higher gains earlier during the session, they moderated slightly by the close.
Here's how the shares ended on Monday:
The ASX 200 has ended higher for the first session of the week, gaining 0.2% to close at 7,962 points.
The modest bounce comes after local shares fell sharply last week — and ended at a six-month low on Friday.
On the sectors front, eight out of the 11 sectors ended in positive territory, with energy stocks leading the momentum (+1.6%) followed by basic materials (+1.3%) and utilities (+0.8%).
However, the gains could be short-lived with new US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports coming into effect on Wednesday (plus the weaker-than-expected inflation data out of China over the weekend).
As for the best performing individual stocks:
While the stocks with the largest declines were:
Hi Andy,
It's a good question, but one that's a bit difficult to answer with any great certainty because Elon Musk took Twitter private at the end of October 2022, before rebranding it to X in March 2023. (Can you believe it's been two years?!)
X being a privately held company means there's far less transparency about how it performs, but there's been no shortage of commentary about how it's fared.
(And to clarify Donald Trump's comments that Andy referenced, he did indeed make those comments during the 2016 presidential campaign — here's an NPR article which covered it at the time.)
While you were busy enjoying your weekend, China was busy releasing crucial economic data — and frankly, it wasn't crash hot.
The world's second largest economy is back dealing with deflation.
No, that's not slowing inflation, it's negative inflation, which means prices are falling.
China's consumer prices fell 0.7% year-on-year in February, reversing a 0.5% rise in January.
"China has entered a deflationary cycle," Wall Street Journal Chief China Correspondent Lingling Wei said.
"Its current 'stimulus plan' — which is much less about supporting households than about helping factories reduce excessive inventories — will make it worse."
This, combined with US tariff policies, and rising risks of a US recession, has seen heavy selling in Hong Kong and mainland China-listed stocks.
At the time of writing, Hong Kong's Hang Seng is down over 2%.
With less than an hour to go in today's session on the ASX, local shares are still in positive territory overall.
But it's still a mixed bag on the whole, with seven out of the 11 sectors trading higher.
As for the individual stocks, the best performers include:
While the bottom five individual stocks are led by Johns Lyng, which is seeing a deep sell-off after S&P confirmed the company would be booted out of the ASX 200 during the next quarterly rebalance.
Lacklustre inflation data out of China on Sunday has fuelled concerns that the country's economy may struggle to meet its growth targets, at the same time it faces a trade war with the US.
Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics yesterday showed that China's CPI in February fell at the sharpest pace in 13 months, falling by 0.7% year-on-year.
(Comparatively, China's CPI in January rose by 0.5%.)
It's the first time China's CPI has contracted since January 2024, and missed economists' expectations, with those polled by Reuters forecasting a 0.5% slide.
Meanwhile, the figures showed producer price deflation persisted, falling by 2.2% in the year to February — but was the smallest contraction recorded in six months.
Analysts say the results could see China roll out more stimulus measures to help the country to reach its 2025 economic growth target of about 5%.
"China's economy still faces deflationary pressure," said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.
"While sentiment was improved by the developments in the technology space, domestic demand remains weak."
With exports at risk due to the trade war with the US, Zhang added that the country's fiscal policy needed to be more proactive, while China's property sector is also struggling.
"Monetary policy also needs to be loosened further with interest rate and reserve requirement ratio cuts, as indicated by the government work report," he said.
A deadline for TikTok to find a buyer in the US is fast approaching, with 49 days having passed since a last-minute executive order signed by President Donald Trump delayed the platform being banned in the country.
The app did briefly go dark on January 19 to comply with US law, which would see the Chinese-owned platform banned for national security reasons unless it was sold.
But Trump's executive order gave a 75-day reprieve to when the law would be enforced — and that extension comes to an end at the start of April. (Although Trump has previously said he would "probably" extend the deadline.)
Speaking on Air Force One earlier today, Trump said there "could" be a deal soon on TikTok, and told reporters that there were "four different groups" who were interested in purchasing the platform.
"We're dealing with four different groups, and a lot of people want it ... all four are good," he said.
TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have not responded to Trump's comments.
As for how much TikTok could be worth? Some analysts say it's as much as $US50 billion — or a cool $79.2 billion.
After weeks of frantic deal making, Star looks to have pulled off a late save — on Friday, the casino operator confirmed a $53 million deal with Hong Kong investors, involving its Queensland assets, in addition to options to refinance its debt.
Prior to Friday's announcements, insiders had warned voluntary administration was looming.
Omkar Joshi, the chief investment officer of Opal Capital Management, however, says Star's woes aren't totally resolved by the arrangements.
"It doesn't take a potential collapse off the table but it does give them more time to get through their cashflow issues given the access to new liquidity which is helpful," Mr Joshi said.
Now, Star has received a proposal from Bally's, a US casino and gaming giant, to back a capital raising of at least $250 million in exchange for a controlling stake in Star.
"It's hard to compare the two plans as we don't really have much detail from Bally's currently but it's good to see different options emerging which could then avoid a voluntary administration process.
"There's still quite a lot of work that needs to be done by Star's board and management in comparing the plans and seeing if this latest proposal from Bally potentially brings out others as well.
"Bally's have long history in operating casinos so that is definitely helpful longer term, but at the moment Star's immediate concern is the haemorrhaging of their cash balance and lack of access to new meaningful liquidity.
"If they can solve that problem then a partner like Bally's would be helpful to have around."
Mr Joshi said Bally's approach is unlikely to draw out a lot of new proposals from other bidders, given there's already been plenty of time for offers to be put on the table.
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