Even though Wall Street will be closed tonight for a holiday, Australian investors will be looking for another solid day of trading after the overnight futures market closed on Saturday morning with a 43 point gain.
That was after 1% plus rises on Wall Street on Friday night for all markets.
The ASX 200 Index rose 29.5 points on Friday, taking the total rise for the week to 105 points or 1.8%, ending at 5879.6, while the All Ordinaries climbed 106.4 points, or 1.8%, to 5941.2.
The ASX 200 has now added 4.13% in 2019 as it matches the pace of the solid opening for the year for Wall Street (see separate story).
ANZ led the market higher last week, rising 3.3% to $26.07, Commonwealth shares climbed 2.2% to $73.23, Westpac ended up 2.1% to $26.15 and NAB added 1.4% to $24.89.
Macquarie Group closed the week with a solid 4.4% at $118.20, Suncorp Group jumped 5.7% to $12.90 and QBE Insurance gained 4.4% to close at $10.96.
Afterpay Touch had a big week and on Friday announced a strong start to its US campaign with $260 million in sales processed in the six months to December.
The company also announced it had underlying sales of more than $2.2 billion in the six months to December, up from $918 million in the six months to December 2017.
The shares jumped 19% over last week to end at $16.10.
Other growth stocks also returned to favour. Appen shares jumped 13% to $15.59 and A2 Milk climbed 9.7% to $11.75.
Shares in Wisetech Global cooled off last week – they added just 1.2% after more than 13% of gains in the first week and a bit of 2019.
Shares in education services group, Navitas jumped 13.6% to $5.60 after private equity firm BGH Capital sweetened its offer for the education company to $5.825 a share.
The board knocked back a $5.50 a share bid in November but now says it is comfortable in recommending the new offer to shareholders.
And Rio Tinto shares ended up 0.3% on Friday at $80.65 (and 1.2% for the week) after reporting a small rise in total iron ore shipments for 2018 and forecasts for another small rise in 2019. Rio said copper production though jumped 22%.
BHP shares rose 0.7% to $33.11 for a rise of nearly 1% for the week. BHP shares though are down more than 3% for the start of this year.
