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First Up

UPDATED 13/12/2025 09:35

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The ASX 200 surged +1.2% on Friday, taking the local bourse to fresh 4-week highs as the miners continued to support the market. The index ended the week up +0.7% but it felt like more after the strong rally into the weekend saw the local bourse enjoy its best session in months. The tech rotation story continues, but fortunately for the ASX, the influential miners have been major beneficiaries as commodity prices charge higher, led this week by silver and copper.

Over the week, the materials sector gained +2.8% while tech retreated -4.7%, extending the polarised sector performance in FY26.

By Friday’s close, the winners’ enclosure was dominated by the gold and uranium names, while the rate-sensitive retailers and tech stocks were abundant on the wrong side of the ledger.

Winners: Emerald Resources (EMR) +13.9%, Ramelius Resources (RMS) +12.4%, Liontown (LTR) +12.1%, Deep Yellow (DYL) +11.9%, Dalrymple (DBI) +10%, Paladin Energy (PDN) +9.4%, DroneShield (DRO) +9.2%, and Newmont Corp (NEM) +8.6%.

Losers: Bapcor (BAP) -21.8%, Life360 (360) -11.5%, Iluka (ILU) -9.5%, Lynas (LYC) -9.1%, Temple & Webster (TPW) -8.8%, Catapult (CAT) -7.7%, Lovisa (LOV) -5.7%, Technology One (TNE) -5.3%, CAR Group (CAR) -5.3%, and Xero (XRO) -5.1%.

The news was dominated by the central banks, with reports by Oracle and Broadcom adding their own spice to the week:

On Tuesday, after leaving the cash rate at 3.6%, RBA governor Michele Bullock signalled that rate cuts were off the table for the foreseeable future, with upside risks to inflation re-emerging.
Major banks have already started hiking mortgage rates by 0.25% as bond markets signal rate rises are likely in 2026.
On Wednesday, the Fed cut rates by 0.25%, but also increased their growth forecasts for 2026.
Domestically on Thursday, Australian employment unexpectedly fell by 21,300 in November, following a revised 41,100 increase in October, increasing fears of rate hikes in 2026.
The “AI Trade” continued to unwind into the weekend as investors looked at results and news from a “glass half-empty” perspective – over the 5 days, Oracle and Broadcom fell 13% and 8% respectively.

Overseas markets were soft into the weekend as the “AI Trade” took another hit following a disappointing sales outlook from chipmaker Broadcom Inc., which weighed on rivals and further fuelled investor anxiety over AI wagers initially prompted by Oracle Corp. In Europe, the UK FTSE fell, and the EURO STOXX 50 both retreated by -0.5%. In the US, the S&P 500 ended the session down -1.1%, led by weakness in Big Tech, with the NASDAQ falling -1.9%.