CANBERRA: The Australian stock market’s recovery continued today as local traders followed Wall Street’s lead and took the ASX200 up 1.08% to finish the week at 5296. That’s taken the overall recovery from Tuesday’s intraday low of 5192 to 105 points – around 2.02%. It was green across the board with all 10 major market sectors higher on Friday. Strangely, in the context of a risk on rally across global markets, utilities were back in favour and the sector was the best performer of the 10 groups on the ASX with a rise of 1.98%.
Energy stocks were up strongly with a 1.53% gain. Whitehaven Coal was the second-best-performing stock in the ASX200 (after Blackmores which rose 9.01%) with another strong rise. Whithaven is up a stunning 7.8% today, and an incredible 18.5% from this week’s low, which is also a long way from February’s 37.5 cent low.
The financial sector also continued its recovery with the CBA following yesterday’s solid 1.9% rally with another 1.03% move higher to close at $72.24, $2.74 above Tuesday’s close. The ANZ rose 1.11%, Westpac was 0.99% higher and the NAB rallied 1.05%. Supporting the financials is the move higher in global bonds. The Australian 10-year Commonwealth government bond rate ticked up again to 2.16%. That’s 14 basis points above last Friday’s close.
Tokyo was higher by 0.7%, and while the “triple witching” options expiry in US markets could make for an interesting night’s trade tonight local traders will be emboldened by the market’s recovery, which has taken the ASX200 back inside the 2016 uptrend. For the chartists, that opens up further topside as the ASX market outlook brightens.
