CBA breaks trading record on strong day for Aussie financials

Australia’s banking sector has had a stonking day on the stock market, on what has been an otherwise quiet Friday.

Heading into the afternoon, the financial sector moved ahead of utilities as the best-performing sector, registering gains of 1.50% on the ASX.

The story of the day was Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX:CBA), which broke its all-time record in intraday trade, reaching a share price of $143.50 in the early afternoon, before readjusting slightly down from that number. CBA’s previous record was $143.38.

ANZ was also performing well: with a 1.44% rise in its share price, which was $31.70 at 13:24 AEST, while Westpac was up 1.39% to $32.02 and National Australia Bank (NAB) had risen 0.95% to $38.87.

The rally across Australia’s financial sector boosted the overall performance of the ASX200, which had gained nearly 0.60% to 8029.20 by 13:28 AEST.

The utilities sector had gained 1.41% at the same time, followed by the discretionary sector – which was up 1.29%, staples (up 0.96%) and real estate, which had listed 0.93%.

Energy was the worst-performing sector, being down 1.68%, while materials were down 0.65%, information technology was down 0.43% and telecommunications were down 0.13%.