This Monday, the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) is having a nice start to the trading week following the five days of red in a row that we saw last week.
At the time of writing, the ASX 200 is up a healthy 0.3% to 7,483.5 points. At this level, we are a little less than 2% off of the ASX 200's all-time high of 7,632.8 points that we saw earlier in the month.
So what's moving the ASX 200 today?
Well, since the ASX 200 (like almost all indexes) is a market capitalisation-weighted one, it's not too hard to find out.
If an index is weighted by market capitalisation, its largest constituents will have the greatest effect on the index itself. And since the ASX 200 is dominated by the big four banks, BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) and CSL Limited (ASX: CSL), we'll start with those companies.
According to BlackRock, together the 6 companies make up around 33.5% of the entire index's present weighting.
Which ASX 200 shares are moving the markets this Monday?
So, the ASX banks are having a pretty mixed day today.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) is currently up 0.62% to $99.89 a share at the time of writing. Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC) has gone backwards, losing 0.06% so far to 25.74 a share. National Australia Bank Ltd (ASX: NAB) is also down, having lost 0.33% so far to $27.32 a share. Meanwhile, Australia and New Zealand Banking GrpLtd (ASX: ANZ) is pretty flat, up 0.11% so far today.
CBA is far larger than any of the other banks. As such, its gains alone may wipe out the malaise from the other ASX 200 bank shares today.
Moving on, and BHP shares are also in the green today, up 0.68% so far to $44.64 a share. This follows the disastrous week BHP had last week. It saw the mining giant lose a nasty 16% of its value. Since BHP is the ASX 200's second-largest share by market cap, this would be helping push the index higher today.
And finally, we have CSL. The healthcare giant is also in the green today, up 0.14% at the time of writing to $306.52 a share.
So, in conclusion, we can say with some confidence that the ASX 200 is being pushed higher this Monday by CBA, CSL, and BHP, albeit tempered by the other ASX banks.
