US equities rallied overnight off the back of optimism that the Israel and Iran conflict will be contained. The Dow Jones gained 300 points or 0.75%, the S&P500 gained 0.94% and the tech- heavy Nasdaq advanced 1.52%. Following Israel’s strike on Iran on Friday, the market took comfort in the fact that this wouldn’t escalate on Monday, after Iran reportedly spoke with several countries to pressure for an immediate ceasefire.

European equities also rallied with all markets closing in the green. The German DAX and France’s CAC both up 0.8%, the FTSE100 up 0.3% and the STOXX600 index up 0.36%.Locally yesterday, the Aussie market closed flat, up just 0.01% as the energy sector rallied following the spike in oil prices amid the Israel - Iran conflict. Energy producers posted very impressive gains, including Deep Yellow (ASX:DYL) advancing over 20% yesterday, Boss Energy (ASX:BOE) up more than 17%, Paladin Energy (ASX:PDN) up over 15% and Santos (ASX:STO) up over 10%.

What to watch today:

• Our local market is set to open higher this morning, with the SPI futures suggesting a 0.06% rise at the open this morning.
• In commodities:
  • Crude oil has eased, now trading 2.7% lower at US$71.00 per barrel, following Friday’s sharp 7% rally. This came after reports Iran sought to de-escalate tensions with Israel and resume nuclear negotiations. The decline followed an overnight surge to US$77.49 after Israeli strikes targeted Iran’s South Pars gas field and an oil depot near Tehra 
• Meanwhile, gold is trading 1.3% lower at US$3,386 an ounce and iron ore is also in the red at US$95.23 per tonne.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter maintain a Speculative Buy rating on clinical stage biotech company Syntara (ASX:SNT). They’ve valued the company at $0.12 and at its current share of $0.057 this implies 110.5% share price growth in a year.
• And Trading Central have identified a bearish signal in Perpetual (ASX:PPT) indicating that the stock price may fall from the price of $17.96 to the range of $14.80 to $15.40 over 34 days according to the standard principles of technical analysis.