Market survives a weak opening to finish higher

The sharemarket ended the day in positive territory despite its weaker opening, as good company results bolstered confidence.
The ASX 200 index closed up 15.7 points at 6005 and the All Ordinaries had gained 18.8 to 5997.4.
ABN Amro Morgans's director of equities in Brisbane, Bill Chatterton, said the Australian market had a somewhat volatile day, dominated by company results. "We had a high in the market of 6036 and a low of 5956, so about 70-odd points in terms of trading range, which compared to the past few days is relatively minor."
Mr Chatterton said it was a huge day for companies reporting full year earnings.
"That is what buoyed the market today and, generally speaking, those results coming out were pretty good," he said. "There were some special ones, like CSL which was outstanding."
CSL shares finished $2.88 higher at $93.06 after reporting a 54 per cent lift in 2006-07 net profit to $539.3 million.
It forecast further profit growth of between 25 and 30 per cent in 2007-08.
The world's largest miner, BHP Billiton released another record result as markets were closing. Its shares ended down 10c at $35.40 after BHP reported a 28.4 per cent rise annual profit to $US13.4 billion ($16.7 billion).
Rival Rio Tinto dropped 87c to $85.43 but Alumina ended 1c firmer at $6.48.
Other companies reporting yesterday, such as Woodside, Brambles, Toll and Perpetual, all posted above expectations and with management offering positive guidance.
The banks toughed it out, with only the Commonwealth doing better, up 25c to $54.40. NAB was 46c cheaper at $39.64, ANZ down 11c to $28.78 and Westpac falling 28c to $26.35. The nation's fifth-largest bank, St George, fell 89c to $33.70.
Engaged couple Bendigo Bank and Adelaide Bank were both up a penny to $15.93 and $15.45.
Macquarie Bank continued its recovery, rising $3, or more than 4 per cent, to $74.85, while rival Babcock & Brown picked up steam, adding 78c to $22.60.
Gold miners gained, with Australia's largest gold producer, Newcrest, rising 4c to $25.10, while Newmont was up the same amount to $5.
Lihir Gold managed to gain 1c to $2.92 despite reporting a first-half loss due to the effect of losses on its gold hedge book and early repayment of a gold loan. The net loss for the six months to June 30 was $US53.1 million ($66.4 million).

Australia's third-largest winemaker, McGuigan Simeon Wines, expects to return to profitability this year after posting its second consecutive annual loss, $5.9 million, better than the $11.5 million loss in 2005-06. Its shares were down 0.5c to $1.955.
Specialty Fashion shares climbed 19c to $1.64 after the company delivered a net profit of $32.1 million, compared with a loss the previous year of $13.81 million.
Shares in Australia's biggest gas and electricity retailer, AGL Energy, fell 36c to $15.45 after it posted full-year earnings in line with its forecasts. However, AGL said it was losing customers, led by Victoria.
Others in the energy sector ended lower, with Santos falling 9c to $11.80 and Woodside Petroleum slipping 1c to $40.99. Beach lost tuppence to $1.12 but Oil Search actually gained 14c, closing at $3.40. Driller Boart Longyear was up 4c to $2.06 on big volume.
Woodside's 16.3 per cent rise in 2007 half year profit was overshadowed by expected cost overruns at the North West Shelf Joint Venture, and the Otway project in Victoria.
Market turnover was 1.9 billion shares worth $6.2 billion, with 651 stocks rising, 581 falling and 298 unchanged.

Market up amid signs of stability

The stockmarket finished higher yesterday, with signs that some stability may be returning to a market rocked by concerns over the US mortgage market.
The ASX 200 index closed 56.8 points higher at 5989.4 on a muted lead from Wall Street and mixed commodity prices. The All Ordinaries rose 52.1 to 5978.6.
On the Sydney Futures Exchange the September share price index contract closed 66 points higher at 5968 on a volume of 33,442 contracts.
An adviser with Bell Potter, Stuart Smith, said there were signs that some stability had returned to the local stockmarket, despite a choppy day's trade.
"You had sellers from yesterday and you had buyers from yesterday not finished," Mr Potter said.
"If you've got a mixture of the buyers and sellers yesterday competing and the buyer's winning, yes, I'd agree there's stability and therefore confidence."
Mr Smith said the market was still very cheap and was likely to attract speculators, while investors would probably wait a bit.
"Our average p/e for the ASX 200 as of last Friday was 13.26, and that's the lowest it's been in 12 months. You've got to say that's good value."
The market leader BHP Billiton picked up 60c to $35.50 and its rival miner Rio Tinto rose $1.25 to $86.30.
The banks also improved, with the Commonwealth up 79c to $54.15, National Australia Bank up 31c to $40.10, ANZ up 32c to $28.90 and Westpac up 28c to $26.63. Suncorp was down 15c to $19.17 and St George up 9c to $34.59.
Merging banks did well. Bendigo was up 23c at $15.92 and Adelaide was up 37c, at $15.44.
Macquarie Bank continued its recovery, rising $1.10 to $71.85, and its Babcock & Brown picked up 52c to $21.82.
The other infrastructure investor Allco Finance Group rose 28c to $9.20 after reporting a 118 per cent rise in annual earnings and forecasting further strong profit growth.
The television network Seven reported a 62 per cent lift in underlying annual profit and announced it could buy back 10 per cent of its shares, which rose 12c to $11.11.
Ten Network firmed 2c to $2.63, PBL fell 11c to $16.88, News Corp lost 23c to $27.07, its non-voting scrip down 25c to $25.42, and Fairfax Media was up 2c to $4.73.
Shares in the engineering group Downer EDI jumped 44c, or 8.51 per cent, to $5.61 as it forecast improved earnings after reporting a recently downgraded $101.5 million annual profit.
Woodside Petroleum fell 10c to $41 even on a falling oil price, but Santos rose 9c to $11.89. Oil Search fell 14c to $3.26 after releasing a disappointing half-yearly report.
Beach Petroleum was down 2c to $1.14 after announcing three new exploration deals: it is earning 80 per cent of two blocks in T/38P offshore Tasmania in the Bass Strait; 50 per cent in neighbouring T/39; and 20 per cent of AWE's Taranaki Basin project off New Zealand. AWE was up 6c to $3.16.
Newcrest Mining rose 5c to $25.06, Newmont fell 89c to $4.96 and Lihir was up a penny to $2.91.
The retailer Woolworths advanced 16c to $27.44, and Coles reversed 23c to $13.80.
Market turnover was 2 billion shares worth $5.58 billion.

Best session in 10 years, ASX 200 up by 260 points

The stockmarket made its best one-day percentage gain in almost 10 years yesterday as global markets reacted to the US Federal Reserve's intervention last Friday to stabilise credit markets by cutting commercial interest rates.
CMC Markets senior dealer Josh Whiting said the local market had had a "crazy" day.
"It was up very strongly, with some investors in the market cheering the Fed's intervention," he said.
"The big blue-chip stocks led the index higher, as you would expect. BHP Billiton was up significantly."
The ASX 200 index closed 261.6 points, or 4.61 per cent, higher at 5932.6. The All Ordinaries was up 256.2 points, or 4.52 per cent, at 5926.5.
The gains were the biggest since October 29, 1997, when both indices rose 5.9 per cent.
On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the September share price index contract added 314 higher at 5902, some 30 points below the physical, on a volume of 55,088 contracts.
Global miner BHP Billiton gained $2.46, or 7.58 per cent, to $34.90. Rio Tinto rose $3.89 to $85.05.
Woodside Petroleum was $2.35 richer at $41.10, Santos was 45c heavier at $11.80 and Oil Search 20c better at $3.40.
Among companies reporting their financial results yesterday, QBE Insurance jumped by $3.02 to $30.52 after it posted a 56 per cent lift in first half earnings and said it had plenty of funds to cover any insurance claims in the US arising from damage caused by Hurricane Dean.
BlueScope Steel was up 52c at $10.75 as it has doubled annual earnings and said global demand for steel remained strong. Rival OneSteel was 43c higher at $6.04.
National Australia Bank was up $1.81 at $39.79, Westpac improved $1.15 to $26.35, the Commonwealth put on 86c to $53.36, and ANZ gained $1.04 to $28.58.
Investment bank Macquarie Bank surged $6.01 to $70.75 and Brown & Babcock was up $2.50 to $21.30.
Hedge fund manager HFA Holdings rose 8c to $1.88 as it raised its profit guidance again for 2006-07.
Among the telcos, Telstra fell 5c to $4.19 as it went ex dividend. Singapore Telecommunications put on 19c to $2.85.
Marketing company STW Communications rose 9c to $2.44 as it posted a 25 per cent lift in annual net profit to $19.52 million.
News Corp was 81c better off, while its non-voters firmed 67c to $25.67. Publishing & Broadcasting rose 59c to $16.99 and Fairfax lifted 17c to $4.71. APN was up 23c to $5.49.
The Ten Network picked up 10c to $2.61 after the Federal Treasurer Peter Costello said he had no objection to CanWest Global Communications Corp converting its 56.7 per cent economic stake in Ten into voting stock.
Among the retailers, Coles Group advanced 63c to $14.03 and Woolworths ascended 86c to $27.28. Metcash was up 19c at $4.53.
Toy shop Funtastic slipped 3.5c to $1.48 as it reported a 2.6 per cent decline in first half net profit.
In the golds, Newcrest rose 75c to $25.01, Newmont was up 12c at $5.05, and Lihir was 16c higher at $2.90.

Asian stocks rally after Fed action

Asian stocks looked set to post their best daily gain in nine years on Monday after the Federal Reserve slashed a key US bank lending rate, while the yen fell as fears of a credit crunch faded and risk appetite rose.
The positive tone for stocks appeared likely to spread to Europe with financial bookmakers calling for modest gains for major European indexes, which surged along with US markets on Friday.
To help counter the credit market turmoil, the US central bank cut its discount rate by a half-percentage point to 5.75 percent on Friday in a surprise move that sparked a powerful rebound on Wall Street. It left its benchmark federal funds rate steady at 5.25 percent.
The Fed also said "downside risks to growth have increased appreciably," dropping its views about inflation being a major concern and signalling a willingness to take more dramatic action to cushion the economy from tightening credit.
"With the Fed now pulling out all stops in order to head off a credit crunch, it's looking increasingly likely that we have seen the bottom in share markets," said Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy at AMP Capital Investors in Australia.
"More importantly the panic selling in various markets over the last week is indicative of the sort of wash out often seen at or around market bottoms."
MSCI's measure of Asia Pacific stocks excluding Japan rose 5.3 percent by 6.20am GMT, heading for its biggest one-day percentage rise since September 1998.
This followed a 9.6 percent slump last week - its biggest weekly decline in nearly a decade.
Japan's Nikkei average ended up 3 percent, posting its biggest daily gain since July 2006 after suffering its biggest one-day fall in nearly six years on Friday.
Risk appetite rises
Spreads of emerging markets sovereign bonds over US Treasuries an important measure of risk appetite, narrowed a further 3 basis points after having tightened more than 15 points last Friday.
Still, central banks in Asia remained vigilant with the Reserve Bank of Australia injecting US$2.67 billion in cash to the banking system to temper upward pressure on some short-term market interest rates.
"Investor confidence has recovered a bit. Still, there are lingering worries over when the subprime crisis will actually end," said George Hsieh, who manages US$545 million for Capital Securities Investment Trust in Taiwan.
Global Mining giant BHP Billiton rallied 7.6 percent, boosted also by gains in industrial metals prices.

Oil, however, underperformed other commodities as the threat of supply disruption from Hurricane Dean in the US Gulf eased.
London Brent crude slid 86 cents to $US69.58 a barrel.
Japanese exporters such as Honda Motor were further supported by a fall in the yen. A weaker currency is usually good news for exporters as it tends to help lift the value of overseas sales.
Yen soft
The yen was shaky with stocks on the rebound and after suffering a steep slide on Friday.
A beneficiary of risk aversion, the Japanese currency had rallied to a 14-month high versus the dollar last week as investors unwound risky trades funded by borrowing the low-yielding unit.
The dollar rose to 114.76 yen staying well above a 14-month low of around 111.60 hit on Friday.
The euro traded up to 154.99 yen after bouncing off a nine-month low near 149.20 yen on Friday. Against the dollar, the single currency was a touch firmer about $US1.3505
But high-yielding currencies such as the kiwi were still soft despite the bounce from multi-month lows.
The kiwi bought $US0.6925, down from an earlier high near $US0.6980, having hit a nine-month trough of about $US0.6640 last Friday.
Strength in equities siphoned off demand for safe-haven government bonds, pushing Japan's 10-year bond futures down from a 17-month high struck last week.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Japanese government bond rose 1 basis point to 1.585 percent, after having touched a near five-month low of 1.575 percent on Friday.

Correct behaviour

August 11, 2007
A robust trading season has not inspired confidence for Australian investors, who have hit the panic button as the US credit crunch signals a global market slowdown.

'I've got my helmet on here - it's ugly mate," groaned Greg Bundy, a former head of Merrill Lynch Australia, watching on helplessly as the sharemarket plunged to its biggest one-day fall since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Investors throughout Asia pushed the panic buttons on Friday as the fallout from a home mortgage crisis in the US heightened, forcing that country's largest non-bank lender to warn it was having problems meeting its lending commitments.
The benchmark ASX 200 index plunged 3.72 per cent, or 229.6 points, to 5936 while the broader All Ordinaries dropped 222.5 points to 5965.2, wiping $55 billion from the market's value. The day's rout takes the Australian sharemarket's fall since hitting a record high in late July to almost 8 per cent - just shy of a technical correction.
And market strategists warn it has further to fall over the next few weeks, predicting the overall damage could amount to a drop of as much as 15 per cent as the contagion from the US subprime mortgage market takes hold in financial markets around the world.
It's been enough to prompt the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank to inject tens of billions of dollars into financial markets in an attempt to avert a liquidity crisis. "It's getting more nerve-racking. It now risks turning into a full-blown credit crunch, which was more worrying than a couple of weeks ago," says Shane Oliver, AMP Capital Investors' head of investment strategy.
Adding to Australian investors' nerves on Friday was the warning from Countrywide Financial, the US's biggest mortgage lender, shortly after Wall Street closed on Thursday, leading to fears here that it would lead to another slump in American markets overnight.
The credit crunch is set to lead to a significant slowdown in the US, which has ramifications for the global economy such as a reduction in investments and a fall in growth in gross domestic product.
"I'm not predicting calamity, but it's inevitable that you can expect a slowdown in economic growth driven by this credit crunch," says Greg Bundy, the former banker who now heads boutique corporate advisory firm InterFinancial. "There is more structural damage ahead. The driver of global growth has been cheap credit and I think that is going to change."
This despite the fundamentals remaining strong in Australia where companies are in the midst of another robust profit reporting season.
But investors are quickly reassessing their appetite for risk, says Nomura Australia's market strategist, Eric Betts. Nervousness on the Australian stockmarket shows deep concerns about the effect of lending drying up and affecting businesses as broad-based as junior miners and investment banks.

"It's a problem if credit-worthy borrowers can't get money because then your whole deck of cards come down," Betts says.
The contagion effect started with US subprime home loans that performed well up until 2006. But lending standards deteriorated and default levels rose sharply this year to about 7 per cent of all subprime loans.
Defaults have meant substantial pain for investors. Two Bear Stearns hedge funds that controlled assets worth $US20 billion ($23.3 billion) collapsed after investing heavily in subprime loans.
The US Federal Reserve estimates total losses in the subprime market could reach $US100 billion. And there may be further bad news to come. About $US1.2 trillion in home loans will step up from low "honeymoon" rates as low as 1 per cent to regular rates of about 7 per cent in 2007 and 2008.
The unpredictability of the 2006 vintage of subprime mortgages has caused havoc among buyers of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) - US home mortgages that were bundled together and sold around the globe.
Investment banks have been at the forefront of packaging, pricing and marketing CDOs, taking a fee of between 4 per cent and 10 per cent of the value of the CDO marketed to investors. These have been sold to a wide range of investors, many relatively unsophisticated and unaware of the amount of risk they were taking on.
In July, PIMCO bond fund's managing director, Bill Gross, highlighted the role of ratings agencies in marketing CDOs, saying they were seduced by CDOs' "six-inch hooker heels". Some investors in BBB "investment grade" CDOs are looking at losing all their money.
Investors who have bought debts they do not fully understand are known in debt market slang as "stuffees". "This whole CDO thing was a huge fee chase," Campbell Dawson, a director with Elstree Investment Management, says.
Because CDOs are effectively an investment with additional debt on top of the original subprime debt, investors' returns have been particularly hard hit when default rates have spiked. Australian hedge fund Basis Capital is believed to have invested in especially risky CDOs exposed to subprime mortgages, leading to warnings investors in one fund could receive less than 50c in the dollar.
"That whole subprime market has virtually shut," ING Investment Management's global fixed income director, James Wright, says. "People are staring across the desk, wondering what the price is."
In fact, CDOs sold for $100 are now being offered in the market for as little as $20, as their value disappears.
And this nervousness about CDOs has infected broader debt markets that companies rely on to fund their operations. Investment banks that syndicate debts - effectively moving the risk off their balance sheets - have been left with up to $US400 billion of debt they cannot sell to other parties.
And so nervousness continues. Wright says: "Anyone who owned debt four weeks ago is sitting on losses. The question is, is it a good time to buy? We're getting a period of complete dislocation. Sellers are really aggressive and buyers have stepped away."
Stockmarkets are starting to feel the same way.

Market falls away at end of session as investors retreat

The Australian stockmarket posted its biggest one-day fall in six years as Wall Street reeled in the wake of the rout in the US subprime mortgage sector. It was the largest fall since the September 11 US terrorist attacks wiped almost $53 billion from the value of the Australian market.
At the close, the benchmark ASX 200 index was 229.6 points lower at 5936, while the All Ordinaries retreated 222.5 points to 5965.2. Compared with the previous week's close, the ASX 200 was off 81 points or 1.41 per cent. On the Sydney Futures Exchange the September share price index contract was 227 points lower at 5924, on a volume of 34,944 contracts.
The chief executive of MFS, Guy Hutchings, said it would take time for the market to settle, with further volatility expected next week. "Cash is king at present, with the market continuing to respond very directly to offshore volatility as the fallout from subprime credit crisis spreads," Mr Hutchings said.
"Investors are clearly spooked by the extent of loses in the US and Europe overnight, and there were no real positions of safety, with losses across the board. The fact that the local market fell away quite dramatically at the end of the session implies traders did not want to hold stocks over the weekend."
The Dow Jones dropped 387.18 points to 13,270.68 overnight, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 44.40 points to 1453.09 and the Nasdaq dropped 56.49 points to 2556.49.
Locally, the big miners were weaker, with BHP Billiton losing $2 to $34.66 and its rival Rio Tinto losing $3.49 to $84.77. The big banks were weaker, with NAB losing $1.28 to $38.22, ANZ 75c to $28.22, Commonwealth $1.45 to $53.35 and Westpac 79c to $25.80.
Flight Centre lost $1.60 to $17.70, despite reaffirming its profit expectations for 2006-07 and estimating a lift in the value of its transactions this financial year by up to 15 per cent.
The furniture retailer Nick Scali picked up 10c to $2.50 on a negative day after reporting a 6.9 per cent increase in annual net profit for 2006-07 to $8.66 million. But retailers were mostly weaker, with Woolworths losing 80c to $26.36, Coles down 82c to $13.87, Harvey Norman down 19c to $5.04 and David Jones down 35c to $4.91. In the media, News Corp fell 84c to $25.93, PBL fell 38c to $18.08 and Fairfax fell 12c to $4.60.
Among energy stocks, Woodside lost $1.91 to $41.70, Santos lost 93c to $11.78 and Oil Search lost 26c to $3.41. Energy utility Alinta lost 34c to $14.54 despite posting a 20 per cent increase in first-half net profit to $96.5 million.
The spot price of gold was lower, trading at $US663.70 an ounce, down $US9.80 from Thursday's close. Preliminary market turnover reached 2.62 billion shares, worth $8.91 billion, with 225 stocks moving up, 1180 down and 230 unchanged.

ASX more than recovers from the days of panic

The sharemarket closed higher again yesterday, helped by stronger US markets and merger activity but also hit by a hefty drop in Telstra, which reported a disappointing profit result.
An ABN Amro Morgans private client adviser, Craig Walker, said the local bourse was "pretty active" as investors digested company reports.
"A lot of the focus has been in Telstra," Mr Walker said.
"As far as our market is concerned, over the next few weeks most of the focus is going to be on companies reporting."
Mr Walker said there was renewed strength in the financial services sector after the Adelaide Bank and the Bendigo Bank announced that they would join forces.
The ASX 200 index finished 64.8 points higher at 6165.6 while the All Ordinaries was 63 higher at 6187.7.
On Wall Street on Wednesday night, the Dow Jones industrial average had soared 153.56 points to 13,657.86.
Telstra fell 19c, or 4 per cent, to $4.52 following full-year profit growth of only 3 per cent to $3.28 billion and the telecom's admission of a generous executive pay structure. Telstra instalment receipts fell 20c, or 6.2 per cent, to $3.03.
Mr Walker said Telstra's outlook was particularly exciting.
"That hasn't given the market much to hang its hat on," he said.
Other big movers yesterday included Adelaide Bank, which surged $2.11, or 14.65 per cent, to $16.51. The boards of it and Bendigo Bank have agreed to merge. Bendigo Bank fell 10c to $16.40.
Among the major banks, Westpac gained 42c to $26.59 after it said it plans to spin off its wealth management business, BT, into a new listed company.
The Commonwealth Bank went up 81c to $54.80, the ANZ put on 37c to $28.97, and the National rose 50c to $39.50.
Global miner BHP Billiton was off 4c at $36.66 and Rio Tinto was down 74c to $88.26.
Woodside Petroleum rose 88c to $43.61, Santos slipped 9c to $12.71 and AWE was up another 7c to $3.27.
News Corp lifted 27c to $26.77 and its non-voters picked up 6c to $24.55 as the group reported a 22 per cent rise in annual earnings to $4 billion.
Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd was 21c higher at $18.46 but Fairfax Media slipped 5c to $4.72. The provincial press group APN was down 2c to $5.73.
The takeover target and retailer Coles Group jumped 62c to $14.69 after bidder Wesfarmers gave Coles' shareholders more options in the way they could accept the bid. Wesfarmers rose $1.41 to $41.38.

Woolworths improved 17c to $27.16 but Metcash lost 3c to $4.47.
David Jones, too, was off, down 13c to $5.26, despite Wednesday's 12 per cent improved sale figures.
The soft drinks maker Coca-Cola Amatil retreated 14c to $8.90 despite recording a 23.3 per cent lift in first half profit.
In the gold sector, Newmont was up 13c to $4.94, Newcrest was a dollar higher at $26, and Lihir was 7c better at $3.17. Oxiana was up a cent to $3.77.
The rural services provider Futuris Corp was steady at $2.37 as it reported a 15.2 per cent rise in annual profit.
The catalogue, magazine and book printer PMP was 7c poorer at $1.53. PMP said it was not expecting a significant difference in earnings this financial year, after boosting its annual net profit by almost 40 per cent.
Qantas was 3c lower at $5.62. The airline announced after the market had closed that it had appointed a former Rio Tinto chief executive, Leigh Clifford, as chairman. Virgin Blue was steady at $2.30.
The top traded stock by volume was again Empire Oil & Gas, with 345.13 million shares worth $6.6 million changing hands. Empire closed 0.5c higher at 2.2c.
Preliminary national turnover was 2.23 billion shares worth $7.25 billion, with 811 stocks up, 459 down and 320 unchanged.

Shares on the rise again, so what was all the fuss about?

Stocks rose sharply yesterday, the market taking an unusually positive view on the day's increase in the interest rate hike, with even banks pushing higher.
The ASX 200 index closed 115.8 points, or 1.9 per cent, higher, at 6100.8 while the All Ordinaries was up 111.1 to 6124.7.
Austock Securities senior client adviser Michael Heffernan said it had been a great day.
"If you get that every day (an almost 2 per cent rise), you're doing very well," he said.
"It was inspired by the decision of the Reserve Bank, ironically, when it raised rates."
Normally the stockmarket can take a hit when interest rates are increased, in this case by 25 basis points, but yesterday the market took the move as a signal of a healthy and bubbling economy.
"It gives a lot of confidence to the overall market," Mr Heffernan said. "Most of the banks are up, which is excellent."
The Commonwealth Bank rose 99c to $53.99, NAB climbed 64c to $39, ANZ swelled 50c to $28.60 and Westpac rose 35c to $26.17. St George was up 46c to $33.64.
"I can't recall any time in the last 10 years when interest rates have been changed and we've seen a reaction from the market in this order of magnitude," Mr Heffernan said.
Another standout performer was pallet and document storage company Brambles, whose share price rose by $1.39, or 12.3 per cent, to 12.73, as infrastructure firm Asciano and Asciano's one-time parent, transport group Toll Holdings, both were identified as holding Brambles shares.
Asciano rose 43c to $9.44 while Toll gained 10c to $14.
"Clearly without a doubt, going up over 11 per cent in one day is astronomic for a stock like Brambles," Mr Heffernan said.
"Some of the other major movers are the smaller miners."
Australian Worldwide Explorations, which is drilling for oil in not too deep waters off New Zealand, put on 16c, closing at $3.20 and Beach, which plugged one well and cased another as a producer, both in the Cooper Basin, during the week, rose 7c to $1.25.
Centennial Coal, which seems to be over its longwall problems, was up 19c to $3.34.
The world's biggest miner, BHP Billiton, put in a strong performance to lift 90c to $36.70, while rival Rio Tinto swelled $2 to $89.
Lihir Gold picked up 4c to $3.10, Newcrest advanced 38c to $25 and Newmont was up 7c to $4.81.

Retailers also took the interest rate rise in their stride, with Woolworths up 29c to $26.99 and Coles up 5c to $14.07.
David Jones was 10c richer after saying it was well placed to capitalise on the strong consumer sentiment in 2007-08, having increased annual sales by 9 per cent.
The local bourse had been given a positive lead by Wall Street after the US Federal Reserve said it still saw moderate economic growth ahead even though credit conditions had tightened for some consumers and businesses.
The Fed, which left interest rates unchanged at a policy meeting, buoyed the market by reassuring investors that problems in mortgage lending would not drag down the broader economy.
The Dow Jones industrial average had risen 35.52 points to end at 13,504.30.
Big energy plays also moved higher, Woodside soaring 94c to $42.73, while Santos rose a respectable 23c to $12.80. Oil Search recovered 12c to $3.68.
Airline carrier Qantas was one of the few losers, down a penny to $5.65, but telecommunication group Telstra climbed 5c to $4.71; its annual results are due today.
Media interests were also marching higher, PBL ahead 35c to $18.25, Fairfax lifting 10c to $4.77, and News Corp 35c stronger at $26.50, its non-voters 2c higher at $24.49.
The most traded stock of the day by volume was explorer Empire Oil and Gas, with 138.91 million shares worth 2.13 million, and its shares ended 0.4c higher at 1.7c each.
The group was forced to issue a statement clarifying that it had made a private placement of 287 million shares at 0.8c each, not 0.08c as previously announced.
Preliminary market turnover was 1.57 billion shares worth $6.67 billion.

The subprime is the ridiculous

Why have Australian stocks lost a 12th of their value in the past week? It's because some American home-lending companies have spent the past five years or so planting time bombs in their balance sheets.
"You were giving people money with with only some remote hope of getting your money back," is the way one of Australia's financial gurus, Kerr Nielson, of Platinum Asset Management, puts it.
"When you give people 100 per cent of the purchase price, when you have no documentation, when you don't verify people's incomes, you are always going to have a crisis."
And the firms were lending to the euphemistically named "subprime" borrowers in such volumes that they guaranteed that, when it hit, the crisis would be a big one. The total of such new lending last year was an impressive $US420 billion ($492 billion), says Standard & Poor's.
In the old days, home loans were made by banks. And when the loans went bad, everyone knew where the losses would turn up - on the banks' balance sheets.
And the regulator, the Federal Reserve, was always on hand to bale them out. But these days it's not so simple. All sorts of companies lend money for home loans, and they sell the mortgages on to investment banks or other investors. Bunches of mortgages, including the dreaded subprime mortgages, are bundled together and sold as securities on the global market.
"Investors all over the world put their hands out for these bundled-up mortgages," says Macquarie Bank's Rory Robertson, "but if they had labels on them - 'bundled-up mortgages of poor people who can't pay for them' - it might have been different."
One consequence is that the bad loans which used to be neatly captured in the big banks are now scattered far and wide around the world, and no one has the least idea where they will turn up.
This week's big panic was set off by a lender called American Home Mortgage, whose share price lost a swift 89 per cent of its value when it announced that it might have to sell everything it owns to meet its obligations.
But it was a big British bank, HSBC, that recently disclosed new bad loans of $US3.9 billion on its holdings of American subprime paper.
And yesterday the German authorities arranged an emergency rescue for a lender, IKB, that faced collapse because of its exposure to American roulette. Most troubling was the report in the Financial Times that the chief German banking regulator, Jochen Sanio, had told participants in an emergency conference call that the crisis had the potential to become "the worst banking crisis since 1931".

In Australia, Macquarie Bank this week became the third local firm to disclose losses incurred through the American-based debacle. Who knows where the next big losses will surface?
As the Reserve Bank of Australia prepares to raise official interest rates next week, how does this fear and loathing in the markets affect its thinking?
One gauge is the futures market. The futures contract that speculates on the likelihood that the Reserve Bank will raise rates in August put the probability at 86 per cent at the close of trading on Tuesday.
By Wednesday, the day of the big stockmarket sell-off, it had been scaled back to 62 per cent. Yesterday, with the stockmarket recovering, the futures market had the likelihood of a rate rise back up to about 70 per cent.
What's the connection? Platinum's Nielson explains how it works for institutional investors: "It's to do with so-called VAR, or the 'value at risk' ratio. As soon as your volatility goes up, your VAR goes up and you ask your traders to pull back" on their investments and risk exposures.
And volatility has shot up around the world in the past few days. If there is a credit crunch looming as frightened financiers recoil from risk, then central banks would have to think about easing liquidity. That is, cutting official interest rates, not raising them. Macquarie's Robertson, the investment bank's expert on interest rate movements, says the market turmoil "will certainly make everyone think a lot harder" about increasing rates next week. "It's not as straightforward as it looked last week.
"On one hand, there is a very strong case for the Reserve Bank to take out some insurance against inflation by raising rates on Wednesday - you've got strong economic growth, widespread price pressures and the lowest unemployment rate in decades.
"But if the markets aren't looking too flash early next week, they are less likely to go ahead."
Does this mean that John Howard, the man who won re-election in 2004 promising to keep interest rates at record lows, will get a lucky break? Official rates have gone up four times since the last election. Will Howard be spared a fifth before the election?
Robertson thinks not: "The bank is more likely to postpone a rate rise than cancel it altogether."
Robertson posits that the governor, Glenn Stevens, might ask the central bank's board to agree to raise interest rates at its meeting on Tuesday but, rather than the usual practice of going ahead and announcing it the next morning, will hold it "in his back pocket until there's calm in the financial markets".
Or he has the option of staying his hand till the next board meeting in the first week of September.
But either way, it is still looking very likely that the Reserve Bank will raise rates between now and election day. The moment it does, the Labor Party will have an advertising campaign ready to go, contrasting the interest rate reality with Howard's outrageous 2004 election promise.
Does this mean certain political death for the Government? Not necessarily. You can already hear Howard and Peter Costello rehearsing their line. In a time of global turmoil, who do you trust to manage the economy?
With polls consistently showing that Australians trust the Coalition over Labor by two to one on this measure, they know the answer they will hear.