A surprise late-week lift wasn’t enough to prevent the ASX closing out its second straight week of losses on Friday.

The ASX/S&P 200 ended Friday’s session 14.6 points, or 0.2 per cent, higher at 6826.9, shrugging off a weak overnight lead from Wall Street after the latest GDP report showed the US economy was still running hot. The All Ordinaries also gained 0.2 per cent.

Consumer staples were the best performing, up 1.3 per cent, buoyed by a 214 per cent gain in Coles to $15.29 and 3.5 per cent rise in Endeavour to $5.02.

Despite the last-day gains, the benchmark still ended the week about 1.1 per cent lower, after hitting an 11-month low on Thursday. The benchmark has ended five of the past six weeks in the red.

Sentiment worsened this week after consumer price data came in hotter than expected on Wednesday, raising bets the Reserve Bank of Australia would need to increase the cash rate at its November meeting.

“The RBA is concerned that if inflation stays above its target band for longer than it is already forecasting then it will boost long-term inflation expectations, making it even harder to get inflation back to target,” AMP chief economist Shane Oliver said in a note on Friday.

Resilient inflation figures were also present in Australia’s producer price index, released on Friday, which rose 1.8 per cent in September compared with the previous quarter and 3.8 per cent in the past 12 months.

The Australian Bureau of Statististics said higher prices for construction, petrol, electricity and gas were compounded by broad-based price increases in services, particularly health and childcare services.

“As with CPI inflation, annual producer price inflation is trending down, but remains too high,” Mr Oliver said.

The tech sector was among the worst hit this week, down about 3.7 per cent over the five days, following an earnings season sell-off centred on US tech sector mega-caps such as Google parent company Alphabet and Facebook owner Meta.

The ASX tech sector ended Friday’s sessions 0.8 per cent lower.

In company news, global gold mine Newmont made its debut on the ASX following its acquisition of Newcrest. The dual-listed shares ended their first day at $59.50.

Harvey Norman gained 4.8 per cent to $3.72 after the retailer revealed a planned $442 million share buyback. Earlier that day, the white goods and home retailer said its pre-tax profits had halved in July-September after sales momentum deteriorated faster than the market expected.

Brambles dropped 5.7 per cent to $13.19 after re-affirming its full-year guidance but adding that volumes in its pallet businesses had continued to decline in the September quarter.

Champion Iron was the best-performing stock on the benchmark on Friday, up 6.9 per cent at $6.94. Goldman Sachs and Macquarie analysts recently upgraded their price targets for the miner.

ResMed was 4 per cent lower at $21.56. Higher costs in the September quarter have further squeezed the health tech’s gross margins.