MARKET AT 7
Good evening. The weekend's drama out of Saudi Arabia barely dented Monday's trading, even with Houthi forces claiming fresh strikes on the kingdom's actual oil infrastructure, a shift from the airport strikes of recent weeks. Markets have bigger things on their mind this week anyway, with the Reserve Bank, the Fed and New Zealand's central bank all circling rate calls inside the next 48 hours.
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MARKET AT 7
ASX rallies as oil eases from six-month high after Houthi strikes
ASX rallies as oil eases from six-month high after Houthi strikes
Yemen's Houthi forces claimed strikes over the weekend on Saudi Aramco's Yanbu facility and the Rabigh refinery, alongside a fresh hit on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport, Gulf News and Al Jazeera report.
The Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted missiles and drones aimed at Yanbu, Taif and the capital, and Saudi authorities have not confirmed any damage to oil infrastructure. Brent crude, which settled Friday at US$116.72 a barrel, its highest since April, eased about 2% to around US$114.50 on Monday. WTI slipped to near US$101, OilPrice.com data shows.
The ASX 200 shrugged it off. After opening down as much as 0.8%, the index recovered to close up 0.2% at 8,810, ABC News reports, lifted by miners and energy stocks, BHP (+1%), Fortescue (+2.2%), Northern Star (+2.8%) and Santos (+1.3%) among them, plus a 14% rebound in buy-now-pay-later lender Zip Co. Banks and retailers lagged, with Westpac and Woolworths both lower.
ALSO TODAY
RBA rate-hike odds climb past 60% as Wednesday's inflation test looms. Markets now price better-than-even odds the Reserve Bank lifts its 4.60% cash rate when it meets next Tuesday, Melbourne Cup Day, with a hike fully priced in by February, ABC News reports. RBA chief economist Sarah Hunter said rates still need more time to work and the board isn't finished, days after deputy governor Andrew Hauser called the inflation outlook "materially worse" than the bank expected in August. Wednesday's third-quarter inflation data, forecast to hold the annual rate at 3.9%, is the number that decides it.
Fed, RBNZ and three other central banks all decide this week. The Federal Reserve is expected to hold on Wednesday, but CME FedWatch data puts the odds of a December hike at around 75%, financial-markets outlet FinanceFeeds reports. New Zealand's Reserve Bank announces its own call the same day, with swaps markets pricing an 85% chance it lifts its cash rate from 2.75% to 3.00%, on sticky underlying inflation and elevated oil prices, Tradingpedia reports. The Bank of Canada, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan also meet this week.
Zip Co claws back some of Friday's record 29% plunge. The buy-now-pay-later lender's shares jumped 14% to A$1.665 on Monday, lifting its market value back above A$2 billion, as bargain hunters returned after Friday's worst session on record wiped close to a third off the price following an "external fraud event" in its US business, the International Business Times reports. UBS called Friday's fall an overreaction; Citi and Jefferies want more answers on the company's US onboarding controls.
Source: ABC News, 26 Oct 2026 → · Source: FinanceFeeds, 26 Oct 2026 → · Source: Tradingpedia, 26 Oct 2026 → · Source: International Business Times Australia, 26 Oct 2026 →
THE MARKET WRAP
OUR TAKE:
Tonight's real story isn't the Houthi strikes, it's how little the market cared. An attack claimed against an actual export terminal rather than an airport runway would, a month ago, have been good for a much bigger spike than two dollars. Traders have priced in so much Middle East risk already that the next escalation is starting to read as background noise rather than a reason to sell.
The number that should worry Canberra more than Sana'a is Sarah Hunter's. When a central bank's own chief economist says the board isn't finished, that's about as close to pre-announcing a rate rise as an RBA official gets without actually moving the dial. Add a Fed and an RBNZ both leaning the same direction inside 48 hours, and this becomes the week mortgage holders have been dreading since September.
Zip's 14% bounce says more about everyone else's nerves than about Zip's own fraud controls. One disclosure wiped close to a third off the stock on a Friday; a weekend with no fresh news brought a chunk of it straight back by Monday lunch. That's a market that's gotten very fast at flipping to the opposite trade, whatever the headline.
Those are your five minutes for tonight; see you at the same time tomorrow. — Miko Santos