Online furniture retailer Temple & Webster soared 23.3 per cent after posting record annual sales of $498 million, up 26 per cent on last year.

Energy stocks climbed 0.6 per cent on the back of rising tension in the Middle East, which pushed Brent crude up 3 per cent above $US80 a barrel. Woodside was up 0.3 per cent and Santos lifted 1.4 per cent.

The laggards

Jobs site Seek halted some of its early sharp losses but still ended the day 6.6 per cent lower after reporting a 13 per cent drop in earnings to $483 million in the 2024 financial year.

It was the worst performing large-cap stock on the index, followed by Netwealth (down 5.6 per cent) and CSL.

The lowdown

“The ASX managed to eke out a small gain despite a flat Wall Street lead and largely disappointing earnings,” said Capital senior financial market analyst Kyle Rodda.

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Meanwhile, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show Australian wage growth remained steady at 0.8 per cent in the June quarter, undershooting expectations for an increase to 0.9 per cent. The annual pace also stayed at 4.1 per cent.

Overnight on Wall Street, the S&P 500 finished little changed after flipping between small gains and losses through the day. The Dow Jones slipped 140 points, or 0.4 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.2 per cent.

Many European and Asian stock markets were also relatively quiet. That’s a notable turn after last week kicked off with the worst day for Japanese stocks since the Black Monday crash of 1987, only to give way to the best day since 2022 for US stocks.

The value of the Japanese yen eased on Monday, calming some more after an earlier surge sent shockwaves through markets.

The sharp rise for the Japanese yen following a hike to interest rates by the Bank of Japan forced many hedge funds and other investors to abandon a popular trade all at once, where they had borrowed yen at cheap rates to invest elsewhere. The forced selling reverberated around the world.

Tweet of the day

Quote of the day

“It’s a way of transferring billions of dollars from poor people to wealthy people,” Labor MP Mike Freelander said of the gambling industry, adding that he had seen the impact on households as a doctor in western Sydney. He blamed the surge for compounding the financial hardship in Australian households and said a total advertising ban was a necessary health policy akin to the controls on tobacco.

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with AP