Australian shares have rebounded from a four-month low and clawed back some of their heavy losses from the past two days.
The ASX 200 was up 1.1 per cent to 7,276 points by 10:30am AEST, thanks to a boost from banking and mining stocks.
Meanwhile, Fortescue Metals has revealed there was a “significant incident” involving an employee, which occurred at the Solomon Hub, in far north Western Australia, on Thursday morning.
“Site operations at Solomon have been temporarily suspended, pending a full investigation into the incident,” the company wrote in a statement.
“Fortescue is working closely with the WA Police and WA Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety.”
The company’s chief executive Elizabeth Gaines said: “The safety and wellbeing of our team members is our highest priority and at this time our focus is on ensuring that support is being provided to our employees and contractors.”
Foretescue is expected to give further details about this incident today.
ASX follows overseas recovery
Some of the best performers were Commonwealth Bank (+1.6pc), Rio Tinto (+1.7pc), Beach Energy (+3.7pc), Woolworths (+2.1pc), Zip Co (+2.4pc) and Orica (+11.3pc).
On the flip side, shares in Cochlear (-1.1pc), Domain (-1pc), Chalice Mining (-1.1pc), Polynovo (-1.1pc) and Virgin Money UK (-1pc) fell sharply.
The Australian dollar had risen slightly to 71.9 US cents. But that was after a steep 0.8 per cent slide overnight.
The local currency’s weakness was due to the US greenback rising to a one-year high — boosted by investors’ growing expectations that the US Federal Reserve will wind back its massive bond purchases from November, and potentially lift interest rates in late 2022.
Share markets in the US and Europe staged a partial recovery overnight following a heavy sell-off on Tuesday that was triggered by US and European borrowing costs (bond yields) surging to their highest levels in months (among other things).
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones index rose 0.3 per cent (to 34,391 points), the S&P 500 gained 0.2 per cent (to 4,359) and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.2 per cent (to 14,512).
The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.6 per cent, with investors looking past a 2.2 per cent fall in the previous session.
Declines in tech stocks earlier in the week created opportunities for investors looking for value, analysts said.
Oil slips from three-year high
Oil prices also dropped, as the stronger US greenback pressured the commodities market.
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