The sharemarket rebounded on Tuesday as Commonwealth Bank and Macquarie scaled all-time highs and energy companies shrugged off concerns about weakening Chinese demand for oil.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 advanced 0.3 per cent, or 23.8 points, to 8011.9, buoyed by a rally on Wall Street as investors stepped back in after last week’s heavy sell-off. The local gauge is now just 137 points shy of a record 8148.7 that was set in August.

On the day, ten of the ASX 200’s 11 sectors finished higher, led by the banking and technology sectors. That followed a 0.3 per cent decline on Monday.

Banks versus miners

Financial stocks were well-bid thanks to another wave of records by the big lenders.

Commonwealth Bank rose 0.6 per cent at $143.77 after briefly hitting an all-time high of $145.24 earlier in the session. Year to date the stock has jumped 28 per cent. Likewise, Macquarie lifted 1.6 per cent to $227.36 after climbing a fresh top of $228.5 intraday.

The stock is up 24 per cent this year. Both CBA and Macquarie have been regularly resetting historical highs since late August.

Westpac and National Australia Bank, meanwhile, hit seven-year highs, while ANZ stopped just 1¢ short of a similar record. Westpac closed up 1.4 per cent to $32.31, NAB advanced 0.1 per cent to $38.95 and ANZ slipped 0.4 per cent at $31.40.

The gains coincided with news that the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority is planning to phase out bank hybrid securities and force the companies to replace them with cheaper and more reliable forms of capital.

Anthony Ip, a fixed-income portfolio manager at Milford, estimates that the changes will be more beneficial to smaller banks than the big lenders, albeit not by much.

Also helping the sector was a UBS report advising investors to choose bank stocks over miners because financials were likely to hold their valuations against a backdrop of falling commodity prices.

Energy stocks pushed higher on Tuesday even as the Brent price fell below $US72 a barrel from weak Chinese demand and persistent global oversupply offsetting supply disruptions from Tropical Storm Francine.

Woodside rallied 0.8 per cent to $23.99 and Santos gained 0.6 per cent to $6.92.

Stocks on the move

Materials companies reversed gains late in the session after China, Australia’s biggest iron ore customer, released weak data that showed iron ore imports last month fell 1.4 per cent from July due to falling steel prices and a gloomy demand outlook.

The result triggered a reversal in iron ore prices, sending the October futures contract traded in Singapore below $US92 a tonne. BHP finished the session down 0.3 per cent to $38.66 and Fortescue dropped 2 per cent to $15.89.

“The struggles in China’s economy continue,” said Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at eToro. “Policymakers haven’t done enough – and if new measures don’t come, we may not have seen the bottom in iron ore prices, which could mean more pain for miners.”

Elsewhere on the ASX, family app Life360 was among the largest laggards, tumbling 8.1 per cent to $17.03 amid a disclosure that director James Synge had sold around $US3.7 million ($5.5 million) worth of shares.

And strata insurance brokerage company Steadfast Group tumbled more than 10 per cent to $5.32 on the second-worst day since listing. The sell-off followed media reports that claimed the company misled clients by sourcing a more expensive insurance policy from a subsidiary rather than offering a cheaper option from a rival.