A war-wounded sharemarket is clawing back lost ground – mimicking overnight gains on Wall Street – with local technology and payment stocks leading the Friday morning charge.
The benchmark ASX 200 was up by 0.7 per cent, or 48.4 points, to 7039.0 after 20 minutes of trade as investors took a lead from the US, where stocks rallied after President Joe Biden announced tougher sanctions on Russian banks.
US tech giants Amazon, Apple and Microsoft helped paper over the cracks during a volatile overnight session, with a battered Australian tech contingent following suit on Friday.
Afterpay owner Block jumped more than 40 per cent to $165, while rival payment firm Zip Co rose 6.7 per cent, and Sezzle was 5.8 per cent higher as growth sector recouped some of Thursday’s heavy losses.
Elsewhere in the tech space, Wisetech Global rose 4 per cent, Appen was up 5.6 per cent, Altium gained 3.7 per cent and Xero climbed 2.8 per cent.
There is still a long way to go to even out Thursday’s savage losses when $73bn was wiped from the local bourse in a 3 per cent fall as Vladimir Putin pulled the trigger on his incursion into Ukraine.
Technology and commodity-based stocks were hit particularly hard during the worst ASX session since September 2020 as news of war sent investors fleeing from riskier equities and towards safe-haven gold and bonds.
The threat of war and energy market disruption briefly sent oil prices above $US100 per barrel for the first time since 2014, but local energy firms remained in the red on Friday morning.
Woodside was down 2.5 per cent, Santos 1.4 per cent, Ampol 1.6 per cent and Beach Energy 3.6 per cent.
There were also losses for each of the big four banks – with Commonwealth Bank down 0.2 per cent – while mega-miner BHP was also in the dumps.
The All Ordinaries was up 0.8 per cent at 7309.5 at 10.15am AEDT and the Australian dollar was last buying 71.65 US cents, having dipped to 70.94 US cents overnight.
