Miners, banks drive ASX higher; Microsoft’s $US450b record day

The Australian sharemarket has jumped at the open after a record day for Microsoft led a powerful rebound on Wall Street.

The S&P/ASX 200 climbed 46.3 points, or 0.5 per cent, to 9014 in early trade, with seven of 11 industry sectors in positive territory, led by materials as mining stocks advanced. The bourse lost 0.8 per cent on Thursday.

Financial stocks climbed across the board with Commonwealth Bank and Westpac each up 0.8 per cent while National Australia Bank and ANZ Bank advanced 0.7 per cent. Meanwhile, global bank HSBC announced it is selling its $36 billion Australian home loan portfolio to private equity giant Blackstone, and it will wind down the rest of its local retail banking business over the next 18 months. The banking group on Friday said it was quitting retail banking in Australia to focus on banking commercial and corporate clients, as part of a simplification push.

Mining shares are strong in early trade, with BHP jumping 2.9 per cent and Rio Tinto surging 2.1 per cent, but Fortescue slid 0.2 per cent as it announced it expects to book a $US525 million ($746.8 million) after-tax impairment charge in its full-year results from its Iron Bridge project in the Pilbara. The miner also reported it shipped a record 201.3 million tonnes of iron ore in FY26. Among gold miners, Northern Star gained 2.5 per cent and Evolution Mining climbed 3.2 per cent as the price of the precious metal steadied at around $US4100 per ounce.

Technology stocks are mixed, with NEXTDC surging 6.7 per cent, Megaport jumping 10.2 per cent and Codan rising 2.3 per cent but WiseTech shed 2.1 per cent and Xero lost 1.3 per cent in early trade.

Energy stocks climbed after oil prices advanced in early Asian trade with Woodside Energy adding 1.2 per cent and Santos up 1.4 per cent. Refiners Ampol (up 0.2 per cent) and Viva Energy (up 1.2 per cent) rose.

The Australian dollar was stronger at US70.35¢.

Overnight, the S&P 500 rallied 1.7 per cent and more than recovered its drop from the day before, which was its worst in seven weeks. The Dow Jones jumped 613 points, or 1.2 per cent. The Nasdaq composite, which is full of artificial-intelligence stocks, rallied 2.8 per cent a day after it fell 9.8 per cent below its record set last month.

Microsoft made market history as it added nearly half a trillion dollars to its value, the most by any stock in a single day. Shares of the company soared 16 per cent, their biggest gain since October 2008, to add roughly $US450 billion ($640 billion) to its market capitalisation. The move eclipses Nvidia’s $US440 billion addition – following President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 90-day tariff pause last year – as the biggest ever, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It came after the company reported that revenue for its Azure cloud unit surged 43 per cent during the fiscal fourth quarter, the most since early 2022. Microsoft also said its capital spending plans for 2026 are unchanged.

Apple released its results after the closing bell, with sales and profits up, fuelled by its customers snapping up iPhones and MacBooks amid price increases across the consumer electronics sector. However, Apple shares are 6 per cent lower in after-hours trade.

Amazon said it will be increasing this year’s capital spending on technology, mostly artificial intelligence, by an additional 10 per cent after the tech and e-commerce giant delivered strong profits and net sales during for fiscal second quarter, helped by surging growth in its prominent cloud computing unit. Amazon shares surged 9.4 per cent in after-hours trade.

The company said that sales in its cloud computing unit called AWS rose 37 per cent during the April-June period, faster than the 28 per cent clip in the previous quarter and marking the fastest rate of growth in 18 quarters.

Meta Platforms fell 8 per cent. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram reported a weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, even though it made slightly more in revenue than expected. It also raised the lower end of its forecasted range for spending on investments this year.

Companies involved in the making of the computer memory and processors that such “hyperscalers” are buying to power their AI efforts rose, recovering some of the big losses they’ve taken on worries their stock prices shot too high in the euphoria around AI.

Micron Technology jumped 18.4 per cent, for example, to trim its loss for the week to 5 per cent. It was the strongest force lifting the S&P 500 after Microsoft.

In the bond market, longer-term Treasury yields held steadier following their sharp accelerations the previous day. They had jumped after the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, gave few clues about what the central bank will do with interest rates to combat the painfully high inflation that continues to hurt the country.

President Donald Trump, who nominated Warsh to lead the Fed, has lobbied for lower interest rates even though they could cause inflation to accelerate.

Reports released suggested the US economy’s growth slowed by more during the spring than economists expected. A measure of Inflation, meanwhile, remained worse last month than the Federal Reserve’s target, but it slowed from May’s level.

With AP, Bloomberg

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