Feb 6 (Reuters) - Australian shares tracked Wall Street to rise on Thursday, with financial stocks and consumer discretionary firms leading the charge after investor jitters about a global trade war started to fade.

The S&P/ASX 200 index .AXJO rose 0.9% to 8,490.7 points as of 2350 GMT. The benchmark closed 0.5% higher on Wednesday.

Overnight, the U.S. Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 0.71%, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 0.39%, while Nasdaq .IXIC added 0.19%.

Investors looked past comments from President Donald Trump that the U.S. would like to take over the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and develop it economically.

Worries of escalating global trade war also ebbed following China's relatively restrained response to Trump's 10% tariffs.

In Sydney, gains were led by financial stocks .AXFJ, which added 1.2%. The so-called "Big Four" banks added between 1.2% and 1.8%.

Discretionary retailers .AXDJ climbed 1.6%, with the country's biggest non-food retail group, Wesfarmers WES.AX, jumping 2.5%.

Real estate stocks .AXRE also rose 1.6%.

The heavyweight mining index .AXMM added 0.4%. Copper prices climbed to their highest in more than a week on Wednesday. MET/L

Chinese iron ore futures DCIOcv1 on the Dalian Commodity Exchange also rose 0.7%.

The domestic gold sub-index .AXGD jumped as much as 2.2% to reach its all-time high after gold prices continued their record run. GOL/

Energy stocks .AXEJ were the only outlier, falling 0.6%, after oil prices fell more than 2% overnight. O/R

Beach Energy BPT.AX dropped as much as 4.6% after its half-year profit and dividend missed expectations and was the top loser on the benchmark index.

Among other individual stocks, PEXA Group PXA.AX tumbled 4% after the digital property settlements platform raised its impairment loss forecast range.

Local shares of News Corp NWS.AX jumped 4.5% to become the top gainer on the benchmark index after its second-quarter results beat analysts' estimates.

Markets in New Zealand were closed for a public holiday.

(Reporting by Himanshi Akhand in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

((Himanshi.Akhand@thomsonreuters.com))

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