Australian stocks closed flat on Friday after investors dumped mining stocks as copper prices fell and bought into the big banks, although sentiment remained cautious ahead of key Chinese economic data. BHP Billiton closed flat after trading in negative territory for most of the day while Rio Tinto fell 0.7 percent, but financial stocks tempered the market's overall losses with the four major banks all ending higher.
"The benchmark's been struggling to push past the 4700 level for quite some time. We did manage to break it this week but we're still vulnerable to a left field development. In the near term, this is most likely to come from China," CMC Markets analyst David Taylor said.
The major banks helped keep the market from falling too far into negative territory. Westpac led gains with a 1.3 percent rise to A$22.57, while ANZ gained 0.8 percent, Commonwealth added 0.7 percent and National Australia Bank rose 0.9 percent. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 closed up 4.605 points at 4745.9.
Shares in Australia's Origin Energy rose 1.2 percent after it said an investigation had found no major health risk after tests of water from its Australia Pacific LNG coal seam gas fields. Origin was also buoyed by news that the competition regulator had given it the green light to buy some power assets from the New South Wales government. Australian property firm Lend Lease gained 2 percent after saying it had launched a $345 million UK infrastructure fund to invest in healthcare, education and accommodation projects. Small-cap ERM Power Ltd closed 3.4 percent higher at A$1.81 in its first day of trading on the local stock market.
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