Australian share market celebrates US-China trade truce with a big gain

Australian shares roared higher today on the back of a tentative truce on trade between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping after the G20 summit in Argentina over the weekend.
In response, shares across the Asia-Pacific region soared, including Australia’s benchmark ASX All Ordinaries Index, which was up more than 100 points, or 1.7 per cent, to 5849.5 at 3.10pm.
The leaders postponed the next round of tariffs in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies and agreed to a 90-day window for further talks.
“This is the best outcome that we had hoped for out of this meeting,” Frances Cheung, head of Asia macro strategy at Westpac, told news agency Bloomberg.
In China, the CSI 300 index of major stocks in Shenzhen and Shanghai rocketed 2.7 per cent in early trading.
Markets in Hong Kong (up 1.9 per cent), South Korea (up 1.7 per cent) and Japan (up 1.4 per cent) all joined in the party.
Wall Street share market futures are up 1.6 per cent as the positive sentiment looks set to spill into tonight’s US markets.
While far from resolved, the easing in trade tensions between the US and China goes some way to lifting share market sentiment that has been weighed down by concerns the trade war is damaging global economic growth.
The US had been scheduled to push ahead on January 1 with increased tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods but that is off the table – for now.