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In the US, Wall St kicked off November with a mixed session overnight. The Dow Jones closed down 0.48%, the S&P advanced a little over 0.1%, while the tech heavy Nasdaq added 0.46%, spurred on by gains in the AI sector. The biggest news was the announcement of a major $38 billion deal between OpenAI and Amazon, which lead to Amazon shares jumping a further 4%.

Europe too saw a mixed session – the Stoxx600 closed nearly flat as declines of 0.16% in the UK’s FTSE and 0.14% in the French CAC offset a 0.73% jump in Germany’s DAX. Meanwhile, Asian markets closed green across the board, lead by gains of 0.97%, 0.27%, and 2.12% in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, China’s CSI and Japan’s Nikkei.

Locally yesterday, despite opening down and falling as low as 0.4%, the ASX200 closed out the day up 0.15%, driven primarily by gains across the banks. Westpac (ASX:WBC) saw the biggest gain, adding 2.8%, while CommBank (ASX:CBA), NAB (ASX:NAB), and ANZ (ASX:ANZ) all advanced 2.3%, 0.9% and 0.9% respectively. On the losing end, healthcare continued its run of poor performance, with major names ResMed (ASX:RMD) dropping 4.3%, and CSL (ASX:CSL) continuing its freefall with another 1.7% drop.

What to watch today:

• Looking ahead to today, the SPI futures are predicting the ASX will open down for a second straight day, indicating a 0.1% drop at the open.
• In commodities, Gold, Crude Oil and Iron ore are all trading flat today with no changes in their prices. Gold remains at $4003 USD per ounce, Crude Oil at 61 USD per barrel, and Iron Ore at 105 USD per tonne.

Trading ideas:

• Bell Potter has maintained its current Buy rating on defence name DroneShield (ASX:DRO) with its current 12 month price target at $5.30 per share, after they announced a new $25.3 million contract in Latin America with delivery and payment through the next 2 quarters.
• And Trading Central have identified a bullish signal in Woodside Energy Group (ASX:WDS), indicating that the price may rise from the close of $25.12 to the range of $27 – $27.40 over a period of 33 days, according to the standard principles of technical analysis.