Steve Daghlian

The Strait of Hormuz remained shut.

Oil prices are still up over 40% from where they were before the war started.

And the signals we had over the course of the weekend and the last 24 hours as well has been quite mixed at best.

You pointed out the South Korean market doing very well.

It's up 56% this year and it rose 75% last year.

So I guess one of the leaders when it comes to chips and that whole AI push as well.

So it certainly has been one of the beneficiaries there.

And we're also in the profit reporting season in the United States at the moment and

roughly 18 every 10 companies that have released their results so far have generally done a bit better than what the market was expecting under challenging conditions.

So, this has kind of also been helping markets lift despite all the uncertainties in the Middle East at this stage.

The financials are slipping for the 10th time in 11 days.

It's been quite a run for that sector, but it's actually still up this month.

We had a very strong start to April, so remember that, but still down today at least by about half a percent.

Tech is down around one.

The utilities are falling by around 3%, so another big loser.

And we are seeing some improvements coming through from healthcare, which was a huge loser last week because of stocks like Cochlear that downgraded its expectations.

And the hearing implant maker fell something like 40% in just one day.

So it's got a long way to go to recoup those declines.

We've also got Megaport today in the tech sector are lifting by about 5%.

So it's certainly one of the best performers of the session.