Mineral Resources advanced 5.9 per cent and Pilbara Minerals grew 3.5 per cent to close with the biggest gains among the large-caps. Woodside Energy followed, up 3.4 per cent.

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Financial stocks were trading in the green, though the big four banks closed with mixed results. Commonwealth Bank was up 0.9 per cent, NAB rose 1.1 per cent and ANZ gained 0.1 per cent, while Westpac dipped 0.3 per cent.

Star Entertainment stocks climbed more than 20 per cent to trade at 29¢ a share. On Friday, shares in the beleaguered gaming giant crumbled by 44 per cent after resuming trade.

The laggards

On the flipside, the communications sector suffered the heaviest losses, dragged by Telstra (down 1 per cent) and Spark New Zealand (down 1.4 per cent) after it announced the expansion of an employee securities scheme.

Newmont Corporation retreated the most among the large caps, shedding 2.8 per cent. The fall comes after a former executive at the miner sued the company last week over safety concerns at sites around the globe.

Rounding out the biggest large-cap losses, Fisher and Paykel Healthcare dropped 2.2 per cent and financial services company Netwealth Group shrank 2.1 per cent.

The lowdown

Moomoo market strategist Jessica Amir said China had brought out the “big guns” to stimulate its economy last week, the effects of which continued to ripple across the ASX on Monday.

“We’ve seen iron ore price go up by 10 per cent in a day and break out of its downtrend, which is really supportive for the Australian sharemarket and our big miners, who, of course, make most of their money from iron ore. That’s why the Aussie sharemarket has hit a brand-new record,” she said.

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“We’ve seen a record amount of stimulus come out of China. So this is a game changer for the Aussie sharemarket, and it’s a game changer for our key exports and for how we make money as a nation.”

She said it was not just iron ore making big moves.

“We’re also seeing today and over the past five days, just on the back of China stimulus, lithium stocks are continuing to move up, and lots of Aussies really interested in lithium,” she said.

“Mineral Resources is our third-biggest iron ore company, and they’ve also got really big deposits of lithium and their shares, would you believe, are up about 40 per cent in five days ... That includes a 5 per cent gain that they’ve made today as well. So people are betting that the lithium bottom is in and they’re diving into lithium and they’re diving into iron ore, and any commodities that they can get their hand on.”

Elsewhere in commodities, gold miners were mostly lower, even as the precious metal traded near a record high of $US2659 an ounce.

On Wall Street on Friday, US stocks closed another record-setting week with a muted performance, as hope built that the US economy can manage the rare feat of suppressing high inflation without causing a recession.

The S&P 500 edged down by 0.1 per cent from its all-time high set the day before, its 42nd of the year so far. The Dow Jones rose 0.3 per cent to set its own record while the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.4 per cent.

Treasury yields eased in the bond market after a report showed inflation slowed in August by a bit more than economists expected. It echoed similar numbers from earlier in the month about inflation, but Friday’s report has resonance because it’s the measure that officials at the Federal Reserve prefer to use.

Traders are betting on a 55 per cent probability the Fed will cut the federal funds rate by another half of a percentage point at its next meeting in November, according to data from CME Group. It usually moves rates by just a quarter of a percentage point.

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Quote of the day

“The answer’s obvious – obvious to economists anyway. Surely, what we should do is create the incentives necessary to discourage destructive behaviour and encourage helpful behaviour,” economics editor Ross Gittins said of tackling climate change with fiscal policy.

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With AP

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