However, market gains capped amid lockdown fears after a fresh spike in COVID-19 infections in Australia's second-most populous state Victoria, where authorities have detected the highly infectious Delta COVID-19 virus variant.
At closing bell, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 was up 35.21 points, or 0.48%, up at 7,295.35, after hitting a record 7,300 mark earlier. The broader All Ordinaries rose 32.60 points, or 0.43%, to 7,543.31. The S&P/ASX200 index posted a 1.6% weekly gain.
Total 9 of 11 S&P/ASX200 sectors were higher, with the best performing sectors was utilities (up 1.39%), followed by healthcare (up 1.36%), financials (up 1.31%), energy (up 1.24%), consumer staples (up 1.12%), industrials (up 1.08%), and telecommunication services (up 0.83%), and consumer discretionary (up 0.57%), while materials (down 1.48%) was worst performing sector, followed by information technology (down 0.49%).
The best performing stocks in the S&P/ASX200 were ARB Corp (up 6.26%), Origin Energy (up 5.36%), bendigo and Adelaide Bank (up 5.12%), Reliance Worldwide Corp (up 4.05%), and Platinum Asset Management (up 3.69%), while the worst performing stocks were Silver Lake Resources (down 8.22%), Ramelius Resources (down 7.7%), Appen (down 6.29%), Resolute Mining (down 6.09%), and Perseus Mining (down 5.61%).
In company news, Sezzle (SZL) fell 4.4% following yesterday's 23% surge on the back of a deal with Target in the US allowing shoppers to use its buy-now-pay-later platform in-store and online.
Appen (APX) stocks finished 6.3% lower after CEO Mark Brayan has sold 109,430 shares at $13.08/share to satisfy tax obligations arising from the vesting of 173,153 performance rights in March 2021.
CURRENCY NEWS: The Australian dollar changed hands at $0.7663, lower than levels above $0.772 seen earlier in the week.
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