The Australian sharemarket closed higher on Thursday despite a slump on Wall Street with the materials sector leading gains.
The ASX 200 finished 0.5% higher at 8,861.70 points. Six of its 11 sectors rose.
Materials stocks were up by 1%. This was boosted by a 4.2% increase in BlueScope after it announced a A$438 million special dividend yesterday, its first since 2021.
BHP and Rio Tinto respectively climbed 2.6% and 0.4% as the companies said they would collaborate on extracting up to 200 million tonnes of iron ore in the Pilbara.
The companies signed non-binding memoranda of understanding to explore collaboration on developing Rio Tinto’s Wunbye deposit and Rio Tinto processing ore from BHP’s Yandi Lower Channel Deposit.
South32 also surged 4.6% as aluminium prices reached US$3,180 per tonne today, the highest since 2022.
Information technology stocks shed 2.2%, meanwhile. Life360 sank 5.12% to hit an eight-month low today, while Zip Co dropped 6.1%.
Xero lost 4.1%, despite launching its suite of analytics tools for small businesses yesterday.
Treasury Wine fell 4.9% after Citi downgraded its shares from Neutral to Sell, saying United States wine distributor RNDC’s potential divestment from some U.S. states could impact Treasury’s earnings this half.
Two-year yields were stable at 4.001%, while 10-year yields were down 0.01 to 4.673%.
In the U.S., the S&P 500 shed 0.5%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1%. This marked Wall Street’s first consecutive days of losses in 2026.
