The ASX lifted strongly on Friday, with all 11 sectors posting gains, on the back of record highs on Wall Street overnight. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 recorded all time highs on Thursday.

The ASX IT and Energy sectors were the two main winners today, both lifting by around 2 per cent. Afterpay (ASX:APT) and Xero (ASX:XRO) are leading from the front for IT, rising by 2 per cent and 5 per cent respectively. Woodside (ASX:WPL) was the energy winner amongst the big caps, rising by 1.3 per cent.

Travel shares are the under-performers, with investors taking profits after the government’s domestic travel subsidy news sent travel stocks flying on Thursday. Flight Centre (ASX:FLT) came down to earth today, dropping by almost 4 per cent after gaining 8 per cent yesterday.

Meanwhile, comments made by Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly, that “the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is effective, it is safe, and it’s a highly quality vaccine” have also set the tone in today’s trading.

The market got a bonus a few hours later when President Biden announced on national television that all Americans will be able to get a vaccine shot by the end of April.

Stock of the day is ResApp (ASX:RAP), which rose by over 17 per cent after announcing a second licensing deal with AstraZeneca Japan. ResApp will supply and integrate its cough counting technology with AstraZeneca’s Asthma Monitoring App to support asthma patients in Japan.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

In other small caps announcements:

Medical tech OneView (ASX:ONE) rose by 100 per cent following a scrip-for-service partnership agreement it signed with investment research company StocksDigital. The deal will see StocksDigital investing $1 million in OneView, and providing stock research coverage for the company to its more than 3 million readers and co-investors.

Volpara (ASX:VHT) was another health tech company today that made a significant announcement, having signed its highest value contract via the recently acquired CRA Health subsidiary. The contract, worth over US$400,000 per year of annual recurring revenue (ARR), will see Volpara provide breast cancer risk scores to a large Indiana-based organisation that has sites across more than 20 US states.

Mining service and equipment provider PPK Group (ASX:PPK) rose by 14 per cent today, after advising that Deakin University will double the size of its ManuFutures advanced manufacturing hub in Geelong, and has named LI-S Energy to be a confirmed tenant. The expanded facility will be used to build a battery testing plant to further study  the LI-S battery technology being currently developed. PKK owns 51.9 per cent of LI-S Energy.

Canberra-based casino Aquis Entertainment (ASX:AQS) delivered a 120 per cent increase in full year profits to $0.8 million, on the back of a top line revenue of $18.9 million. The result was rather surprising for the market given that the company has been severely affected by various lockdowns. The share price jumped by 15 per cent on the news.

In what appears to be a somewhat ironic move, engage:BDR (ASX:EN1) has reached a deal with Acceptable Ads Exchange (AAX) that enables the company to show ads to users of the world’s largest ad blocking solution – AdBlock Plus. The company is currently testing the integration, and is expected to go live and start earning recurring revenues as early as next week. The EN1 share price skyrocketed 25 per cent.

TRADING HALTS

Monday:

MetalsTech (ASX:MTC) – spin out of assets
Credit Intelligence (ASX:CI1) – capital raising
Xstate Resources (ASX:XST) – drilling update
Sacgasco (ASX:SGC) – drilling update
Accent Resources (ASX:ACS) – ASX query
Theta Gold Mines (ASX:TGM) – capital raising
EQ Resources (ASX:EQR) – capital raising
ECS Botanics (ASX:ECS) – capital raising
Vortiv (ASX:VOR) – capital return

Tuesday 

King Island Scheelite (ASX:KIS) – capital raising
Story-I (ASX:SRY) – capital raising
Incannex Healthcare (ASX:IHL) – research program launch