ASX closes at 7921.3 points after rocky week amid Wall Street chaos

The Australian share market has rounded off the week somewhat more positively than expected after a tumultuous finish on Thursday.

The benchmark ASX200 gained 60.1 points, or 0.76 per cent, to end at 7921.3 points at the closing bell on Friday. Friday's best performers were Karoon Energy Ltd and Liontown Resources Ltd, up 5.75 percent and 5.46 percent respectively.

The index has lost 0.63 percent in the last five days.

Ten of the 11 sectors finished in the green, with mining seeing the strongest gains at 1.4.

Iron ore miners Fortescue, BHP and Rio Tinto saw gains between 1.0 percent and 2.75 percent.

Property and energy shares also fared well, with Woodside rising 0.3 percent.

The only industry that hit the red was consumer goods.

The broader All Ordinaries index also saw a rise of 58.8 points, or 0.7 1.36, to end at 8153.10.

Best performing stocks for the week include IRESS which rose 17.0 percent, Insignia Financial lifted 12.2 percent and Polynovo with a gain of 6.6 percent.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the index, Bellevue Gold recorded the worst stock of the week with a loss of 20.9 percent.

The poor result comes as no surprise after Bellevue Gold shocked investors with news on Thursday that the Sydney-listed miner raised A$150 million through a placement in a bid to de-risk the company by eliminating more than half of its debt.

But Bellevue's managing director and chief executive officer, Darren Stralow, also said it will support accelerated exploration and growth and unlock the project's free cash flow to enable the company's self-financing expansion plan.

“We are extremely pleased with the very strong support for the placement from both our shareholders and new investors,” Stralow said on Friday.

“With the benefit of the improved financial flexibility we now have, our team's focus will continue to be on unlocking the capacity and value of this special mining operation by significantly increasing production and reducing costs, to maximize free cash flows and returns for our shareholders .

“We are also excited about the opportunity to resume exploration at the Bellevue Gold Project, after two years of very limited exploration during commissioning and ramp-up, with a number of very potential opportunities to grow the resource.”

The Dow Jones rose 81 points, or 0.2 percent, while the S and P 500 indexes lost 0.5 percent.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell again to end up 0.9 percent, a rout that continued a day after its biggest one-day percentage loss since 2022.

The Australian dollar was trading at US65.55c at the time of publication.

Leave a Comment