Thursday saw the Australian Stock Exchange climb to an “all-time high”, which was helped largely by strong gains in the Australian banking sector. Australia’s 4 main banks all rallied on Thursday, with Commonwealth Bank of Australia breaking company records.
Ed Boyd, Business Report for Sky News, tempered the good news with further news that Australian brokers are preparing to sell their clients’ stock in the banking, not confident the current gains are sustainable.
The S&P/ASX200 climbed to 7763.7, or just under 0.4 per cent, just two points off the exchange’s intraday record of 7769.1 points. The All Ordinaries performed even better climbing to 8026.7, or 5 per cent, missing out on beating its intraday record by just two points.
9 out of 11 Australian industry sectors finished with gains on Thursday, particularly the banking sector as mentioned. The biggest mover was the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) which gained 1 per cent, rising to $29.30 per share. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia also reached a new records of $119.37 per share, an increase of 0.8 per cent.
Other winners includes the National Australia Bank which increased to $34.32 or 0.7 per cent, and Westpac rose to $27, an increase of 0.2 per cent
Not all business had a good day, with Rio Tinto falling to $120.67. This figure represents a 2.4 per cent drop for the iron ore mining company. The Broken Hill Propriety Company (BHP) also fell, dropping by 2.4 per cent to $43.84. However, not all companies in the Australian mining industry had a bad day, with Fortescue shares rising to $26.04, an increase of 1.1 per cent.
Gold mining stocks also performed well as Northern Star Resources rose by 1.85 per cent to $14.29 per share. Evolution Mining rose to $3.27 per share and Regis Resources rose to $2.01, or 2.03 per cent for both companies. The biggest climber in the gold mining sector was Perseus Mining which rose to $2.04, or 4.35 per cent.
The tech industry also contributed well to the overall performance. Monitoring business Life 360’s shares increase to $11.82 – and increase of 4 per cent. Others in the industry performed even better, with Zic rising by 12.3 per cent to $1.32. The biggest winner in the sector was Appen, which rose to 73c, or 15.9 per cent.
Tech stocks also finished higher, buoyed by a positive lead from Wall Street after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell told a congressional hearing that the central bank was likely to press ahead with rate cuts this year despite hotter-than-expected inflation and prices data.
Appen surged 15.9 per cent to 73c, Zip zipped 12.3 per cent higher to $1.32, and location monitoring firm Life360 climbed 4 per cent to $11.82.
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