Things are looking up this morning after the Nasdaq and S&P 500 both broke to new highs in trading overnight, with the Dow Jones sitting pretty close to record levels too.

Australia’s home-grown buy-now-pay-later success story Afterpay emerged as one to watch yet again, after reporting a 90% growth in sales in its full year report, continuing the recent upward trend we’ve seen in tech stocks.

Reflecting on yesterday, we saw the benchmark ASX 200 index (ASX: XJO) record a modest 0.2% gain as energy, information technology, materials, and (perhaps surprisingly) travel names rallied.

Oil prices were up, and iron ore prices were down, although the US $20 a tonne drops we saw last week appear to be behind us and miners including BHP (ASX: BHP) and Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) managed to climb 1% during the session.  

Meanwhile the pressure on fossil fuels could start mounting even further, with rumours swirling this morning that some major institutional investors – including several Australian Super Funds – could start shorting carbon emitting companies to mitigate their climate risks.

That would certainly mark an escalation from the divestment tactic many funds have been taking of late.

This morning has already seen a flurry of activity, with a few big moves in corporate Australia – Kerry Stokes has announced he’ll step down from his role as chair of Seven Group Holdings (ASX: SVW) and NAB (ASX: NAB) has appointed former Bank of New Zealand chief Angela Mentis to a newly created ‘group chief of digital, data and analytics’ role.

The XJO looks positive on the open with a slight rise and price action remaining above 7500 and the 50 DMA. We will be looking for reversion towards the post-COVID trend line in the coming days. IV is low and the IV rank is at 9 which makes a good opportunity for buying options cheaply that suit your view of the market.

WiseTech Global (ASX:WTC) has gapped higher after releasing their results, now trading above $43.00.

Elsewhere on the market, the Emerging Companies Index notched up a 1.1% gain, while the Small Ordinaries crept up by 0.15%. 

Big gainers in that index included Nanosonics (ASX: NAN), up 21.9% after reporting its full year revenues were up 3% on the prior corresponding period (with second half revenues alone up 39%); and oOh!media (ASX: OML), up 10.72% after announcing it had tripled its EBITDA in the 6 months to July.

Uniti Group (ASX: UWL), HUB24 (ASX: HUB), and Opthea Limited (ASX: OPT) all also saw gains greater than 7%.

Speaking of success stories – one investor whose name has been immortalised among investment circles is Alex Waislitz, Australia’s own “Warren Buffet” and Chairman of Thorney Investment Group.

Alex will be joining us this Friday 27th August at 12pm (AEST) for “The Insider: Meet the Fund Manager” webcast, where he’ll provide insights on investing in value stocks that are expected to grow in the next two years. He’ll also discuss some of the key stocks in his portfolio that could be well placed to navigate the current economic environment. To join us for this session, click here.