Australian investors’ continued cautious optimism saw the sharemarket lift for a third straight session to finish off its best week in more than a year.
The price of shares in eight of 11 sectors rose on Friday despite global uncertainty over the war in Ukraine, rate hikes in the United States and snowballing coronavirus cases in China.
With energy and tech stocks leading the pack, the benchmark ASX 200 rose by 43.6 points or 0.6 per cent to close at 7294.4 points.
The broader All Ordinaries rose by 49.6 points, or 0.66 per cent, to close at 7571.2 points, while the Australian dollar remained fairly steady at 73.82 US cents.
Strong commodity prices helped the index make a fairly strong finish to a very strong week, which rose by 3.3 per cent over the five days – the largest such increase in more than a year.
Investors were positive despite the global economic and geopolitical tensions bubbling away in the background, which IG Marketxjmtzyws analyst Kyle Rodda said was “a little bit curious”.
“I think it has a lot of commentators scratching their heads,” he said.
“We’ve still got the war raging in Eastern Europe, we’ve had the US feds hike rates for the first time in four years, but they had really strong price action on Wall Street and China managed to bolster its stock market as well.”
He said there was often a sense the stock market moved ahead of positive developments, which proved true in the US on Friday, where all three major indices were in the green when Wall Street closed overnight.
Despite mixed signals on any peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, local investors appear to have welcomed an expected US interest rate hike as well as jobs data that showed Australian unemployment at a 14-year low.
CommSec market analyst Steven Daghlian said a number of factors had contributed to an encouraging week on the Australian sharemarket, particularly considering interest rates were also lifted in the UK and Taiwan in the last couple of days.
“Oil prices dropped from the 14-year high they reached last week, so there’s been some relief. I guess from the Fed meeting we had greater certainty on the number of rate hikes (the US is going to have) in 2022,” he said.
“We’ll wait and see. No one knows if it’s going to last this week. Next week is going to be quieter (with) nothing major to move the needle.”
Rising commodity prices bumped up shares across the materials and energy sectors, with the latter rising by more than 2 per cent after oil rebounded.
Woodside closed 2.7 per cent higher to $31.37, Santos was up 1.9 per cent to $7.54 and uranium miner Paladin Energy jumped 7 per cent to $0.84.
The mining giants all had a strong day after iron ore prices rose. Rio Tinto was up 1.6 per cent to $110.34, BHP gained 1.25 per cent to $46.25 and Fortescue Metals rose 2.2 per cent to $18.57.
Liontown Resources was the strongest performer of the session with a 7.8 per cent increase to $0.12.
It was followed closely by Afterpay owner Block, which didn’t manage as dazzling a performance as it did on Thursday, but still notched a 7.23 per cent rise to $11.38.
Star Entertainment dropped by 3.6 per cent to $3.19 in the wake of bombshell money laundering allegations that were aired during a public hearing into Star’s casino license.
Software company Megaport Limited fared the worst of the day despite tech’s strong overall session, falling 8.06 per cent to $13.
