Shares notched their sixth straight session of gains on Friday as investors took confidence the US economy would avoid a recession, supporting the earnings outlook.

On Friday, the S&P/ASX 200 rose 1.3 per cent, or 105.6 points, to 7971.1 points. For the week, the index jumped 193.4 points, or 2.4 per cent, as profits broadly delivered on expectations and bond yields eased.

On Wall Street, shares extended a week-long rebound on Thursday with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Index adding 2.3 per cent as worries over weak US jobs data and a stockmarket rout in Japan receded.

Stocks in focus

On the sharemarket, National Australia Bank rose 1.5 per cent to $36.48 after it posted a third-quarter cash profit of $1.75 billion, in line with analysts’ forecasts.

“It appears that NAB has sharpened its Australian home loan pricing over the last month to deal with mortgage market share loss – so there may be some NIM [net interest margin] pressure to come from this over the next six months,” said Azib Khan, analyst at Evans & Partners.

“The element of increasing concern is asset quality. Despite the bad debt charge being lower than expected, there continues to be broad-based deterioration in the business lending portfolio.”

The materials sector dominated by the big iron ore miners also rebounded. The sector finished up 2.2 per cent to claw back some heavy losses this week as the major miners sunk in tandem with an iron ore price that dropped to its lowest level since 2022 on worries over the health of China’s economy.

BHP rallied 2 per cent to $40.01, with energy giant Woodside firming 2.4 per cent to $26.12.

Elsewhere, shares in ASX edged up 0.1 per cent to $64.06, after the bourse reported an underlying profit of $474.2 million, slightly down on last year, while revenue hit a record high of $1.03 billion.