The local share market set a fresh intraday high in early trading this morning, but it’s looking hit-or-miss if it will be able to hang onto those gains and record an all-time closing high.
The S&P/ASX200 rose as many as 39.1 points, or 0.5 per cent, in the first half-hour of trading on Friday, setting a new intraday high of 7,737.8.
But by noon AEDT the benchmark index had slowly faded to give back nearly all of those gains, up just 4.4 points at 7,703.1.
Its all-time record closing high is 7,699.4, set on February 2. The ASX200 closed less than a point under that level on Thursday.
The broader All Ordinaries at noon was up 5.8 points at 7,965.3.
The overnight release of a key inflation metric that the Federal Reserve looks at when deciding whether to adjust interest rates showed prices falling in line with expectations in January, and hadn’t budged markets much.
Five of the ASX’s 11 sectors were up at midday and six were down. Health care had dropped 1.5 per cent, tech was up 1.6 per cent and materials was up 1.1 per cent.
Life360 was the biggest gainer in the ASX200, soaring 35 per cent to a more than two-year high of $11.05 after the location-tracking tech company beat guidance by delivering full-year operating earnings of $US20.6 million.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Wei-Weng Chen called it a strong result with a strong outlook for the future.
The US-based company is the last to announce its earnings results this season, having received a waiver from the ASX that effectively allows it to disclose its earnings a day later other companies on the exchange.
In the materials sector, lithium companies were showing signs of life, with Core Lithium and Arcadium Lithium both up around nine per cent.
Elsewhere in the sector, BHP was up 0.8 per cent, Rio Tinto had added 1.1 per cent and Fortescue had grown 0.7 per cent.
All of the Big Four banks were modestly higher, with CBA rising 0.4 per cent, NAB climbing 0.3 per cent and even smaller gains for Westpac and ANZ.
The Australian dollar was buying 65.06 US cents, from 65.05 US cents at Thursday’s ASX close.
Source Agencies
