ANZ's cash earnings, which strip out one-off items, rose 31 per cent to $7.59 billion, slightly ahead of analyst expectations. The final dividend of 83 cents per share took the full-year payout to $1.66 per share, in line with last year but slightly lower than forecasts.
US tech stocks rallied on Friday, while Wall Street still shed close to 3 per cent over the week. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained 4.2 per cent after slumping in its biggest one-day drop since April 2025. Nvidia rose nearly 3 per cent after its worst day since the emergence of low-cost Chinese AI model DeepSeek in January 2025. Other chipmakers, including AMD, Intel and Micron Technology, closed up between 5 and 11 per cent.
The sentiment was supported by stronger-than-expected US jobs data. Non-farm payrolls grew 165,000 in October, beating the consensus forecast of 70,000, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1 per cent.
Portfolio manager Gerry Sparrow of Sparrow Capital Management attributed some disruption in investor expectations to political uncertainty, noting the change in government from Republican-led to Democratic-led. He said volatility around elections or political events always disrupts markets.
In commodities, Iraq reached an understanding with the United States to allow its oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz via a shipping lane near Oman, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein told Al Jazeera. The slide in oil prices halted on Friday, with Brent crude futures edging higher, though Brent fell 17 per cent for the week, its steepest weekly percentage fall since the start of the COVID pandemic. Gold slipped slightly but gained more than 5 per cent for the week. Copper fell to its lowest level since July as traders considered the implications of a slower rollout of data centres.