Australian Stock Report Market Wrap Up: Local shares close higher

SYDNEY – 21 January 2016: The Australian share market closed higher for the third time this year, despite giving up strong early gains.

“We saw the big gains from this morning evaporated near the close of trade,” said Chris Conway, Head of Research at the Australian Stock Report.

According to Conway, the big banks were the major culprits in the fade, with three of the big four closing in negative territory.

ANZ Banking Group (ANZ) continued to stumble lower, extending yesterday's falls by another 1.7%. Commonwealth Bank (CBA) dropped 1% and Westpac (WBC) 0.6%, while National Australia Bank (NAB) eked out 0.3% gain.

Offsetting the banks were gains in Woolworths (WOW) which tacked on 1.3%, and Wesfarmers (WES) which jumped 2.7%.

Other top performers included Telstra (TLS), up 2.6%, and CSL Limited (CSL) which pushed 1.8% higher to a new all-time high.

Conway added, “In the beaten down energy space, Origin (ORG) jumped 6.7% after the company told the market not to worry about its debt covenants.”

Woodside (WPL) fell 1.5% after announcing a $1.7 billion write-down alongside a production update. Also revealing a quarterly production update was OZ Minerals (OZL), which popped 6.7% on the numbers.

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