Banks lift Aussie market out of the red
A bounce in financial stocks has helped the Australian share market recover from sharp early losses to finish the session slightly higher.
The local share market has mirrored Wall Street's volatility, Australian Stock Report senior equity analyst Benny Sada said.
"It has been a wild day. The market doesn't know what to do," he said.
"Europe's economic malaise, weak economic data out of the US and global growth concerns have caused a lot of panic among investors."
A late rally among the big four banks helped the market rebound from sharp early losses.
"A lot of value buying has propped up the banks during afternoon trade, which has led to this rebound," Mr Sada said.
US markets endured the most volatile day of trade in more than two years overnight with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping as much as four per cent before a late rally resulted in it closing one per cent lower.
Among the banks on the local bourse, the Commonwealth Bank rose 48 cents to $75.93, ANZ was up 21 cents at $31.58, Westpac gained 27 cents to $32.73 and National Australia Bank was 34 cents higher at $32.88.
Weaker commodity prices, apart from gold, hit the mining-related materials sector hard.
Among the major miners, BHP Billiton declined 47 cents to $33.33 and Rio Tinto dropped $1.10 to $59.89.
Fortescue Metals was minus 22 cents at $3.42 after it said falls in iron ore prices in the September quarter impacted revenue.
Woodside Petroleum was up 66 cents at $39.66, after lifting its full year production forecast.
Santos was 17 cents higher at $12.64 and Oil Search rose 12 cents to $8.58.
Iluka Resources was 18 cents lower at $7.55 after revealing a seven per cent drop in revenue for the first nine months of the year, compared with the same period in 2013.
Ten Network shares gained one cent, or 5.26 per cent, to 20 cents after the struggling television business posted its third consecutive full year loss.
Telstra was up five cents at $5.43.
KEY FACTS
At 1615 AEDT on Thursday, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was up 9.3 points, or 0.18 per cent, at 5,254.9 points.
The broader All Ordinaries index was up 6.3 points, or 0.12 per cent, at 5,244.3 points.
The December share price index futures contract was down eight points at 5,235 points, with 47,308 contracts traded.
National turnover was 1.65 billion securities worth $5.5 billion.
