ASX finishes week down; Gold miners jump, Life360 soars

The Australian sharemarket eked out a small gain on Friday after increases on Wall Street overnight, but it was not enough to pull the local bourse up after losses earlier in the week. The market fell 0.27 per cent over the past five days.

The S&P/ASX 200 started the session down but finished in the green, adding 11.4 points, or 0.13 per cent, to 8860.1 points. Just three of the market’s 11 industry sectors ended higher. Gold stocks helped the materials sector rise after the price of the safe haven rebounded.

Among the miners, Rio Tinto shed 1.5 per cent and BHP advanced 0.7 per cent along with Fortescue, which rose 0.14 per cent. Gold miners rebounded from sharp losses in the previous session. Northern Star rose 5.4 per cent and Evolution Mining jumped 5.3 per cent.

Technology stocks also lifted, fuelled largely by a huge 27 per cent rise for location tracking app Life360 after a positive Q4 trading update prompted the company to lift its full-year guidance. Xero gained 3.5 per cent and TechnologyOne added 2.7 per cent.

Financial stocks gave up some of Thursday’s strong gains. All the big four banks fell: Commonwealth Bank (down 0.75 per cent), Westpac (down 0.4 per cent), National Australia Bank (down 0.2 per cent) and ANZ Bank (down 0.5 per cent) all lost ground.

Energy stocks were lower. Woodside Energy slipped 0.5 per cent and Yancoal dropped 2.6 per cent.

The Australian dollar continued to strengthen and was trading at US68.49¢. Overnight, US stocks regained more of their losses for the week following the latest walkback by US President Donald Trump from his most severe threats over Greenland.

The S&P 500 gained 0.5 per cent and added to its big gain from Wednesday, when Trump said he had reached “the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland” and called off 10 per cent tariffs for European countries that he said opposed his having the Arctic island. The index has recovered most of the losses it had taken after Trump shook financial markets with his initial tariff threat.

The Dow Jones climbed 306 points, or 0.6 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.9 per cent.

Trump’s U-turn is the latest example of him making a big initial threat, only to pull back after seeing how much pain it created in financial markets. The pattern has led to the “TACO” acronym, suggesting that “Trump Always Chickens Out” if markets react strongly enough. Tuesday’s drop for the US stock market was the worst since October and it was large enough that Trump, who often claims credit when Wall Street is doing well, acknowledged “the dip”.

But the pattern has also led to deals for Trump that outsiders may have initially considered unlikely if not for his market-shaking opening moves.

Details are still sparse about the framework of a deal on Greenland that Trump said he had reached with the head of NATO. And it is not a signed deal yet.

Financial markets were still showing some signs of nervousness on Thursday. Gold’s price swung between small losses and gains before turning 1.6 per cent higher. Its price often rises when investors are looking for something safer to own. The value of the US dollar weakened against the euro and several other foreign currencies.

But Treasury yields held relatively steady in a signal that foreign investors weren’t rushing out of the US bond market.

Yields got some support from reports on the US economy’s strength that came in better than expected. One said fewer US workers had applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected in a potential signal that the pace of layoffs remained low. A second suggested the US economy had grown at a faster rate during the summer than the government initially estimated.

A third said that inflation in November had been close to economists’ expectations. Spending by US consumers was a touch better than expected.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed as high as 4.28 per cent following the reports, but it later eased to 4.25 per cent from 4.26 per cent late Wednesday.

On Wall Street, Northern Trust climbed 6 per cent after reporting a stronger profit for the end of 2025 than analysts expected. CEO Michael O’Grady also said the financial services company was entering 2026 with “strong momentum across all our businesses”.

Procter & Gamble added 2.6 per cent after likewise delivering a better profit than analysts expected. Revenue for the company behind the Downy, Pantene and Tide brands, though, fell just shy of expectations amid what CEO Shailesh Jejurikar called a “challenging consumer and geopolitical environment”.

Shares of BitGo, a company that helps crypto businesses and traditional financial firms hold and manage digital assets, rose 2.7 per cent in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. The company priced its stock at $US18 per share in its initial public offering, above its earlier estimated range of $US15 to $US17.

JPMorgan Chase rose 0.5 per cent after a lawsuit filed by Trump against the bank caused minor ripples for its stock. Trump accused JPMorgan Chase of closing his accounts for political reasons after he left office in 2021.

They helped offset an 8.1 per cent drop for spice seller McCormick & Co, whose profit fell short of expectations. CEO Brendan Foley said it continued to face rising costs because of “a shifting global trade environment”.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 37.73 points to 6913.35. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 306.78 to 49,384.01, and the Nasdaq composite gained 211.20 to 23,436.02.

Indexes climbed across Europe and Asia amid relief on Trump’s walkback on tariffs.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.7 per cent, and Germany’s DAX returned 1.2 per cent for two of the world’s bigger moves.

Global markets also got support from a continued easing of long-term yields in Japan’s bond market. They had spiked early in the week on worries that Japan’s popular prime minister could make moves that would add heavily to the government’s already big debt.

But the 40-year Japanese government bond yield has come back since hitting a record and dropped below 4 per cent on Thursday after hitting 4.22 per cent on Tuesday.

With AP

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