Market pushes higher

Despite many companies going ex-dividend and soft leads from the US, the benchmark is pushing higher.

Owen Raszkiewicz

Owen Raszkiewicz is a Motley Fool Contributor. Owen has been a Contributor since 2013, having also spent time as a Fool writer/analyst. He also worked as an Investment Analyst at Zenith Investment Partners, Australia's top research house specialising in managed funds. Owen has appeared on Channel 10's The Project and was invited on the BBC. He holds a Masters of Applied Finance, Masters of Financial Planning, Bachelor of Technology, Advanced Diploma of Financial Services and Diploma of Mortgage Broking Management. In addition, Owen has passed Level 1 of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Program. He has taken the Banking + Finance Oath (BFO). When he is not writing, Owen is Managing Director of Rask Finance, an Australian financial education company. You can email him: [email protected].

Published August 19, 2013 12:54 pm AEST

Resilience in commodity prices, long-awaited dividend payments and the increased likelihood of a liberal victory at the next election has pushed the local market higher by 11 points to 5,124.

Wesfarmers (ASX: WES) and Westpac (ASX: WBC) have risen by 2.2% and 1.2% whilst the big miners continue to push higher thanks to a stronger US dollar.

Commonwealth Bank (ASX: CBA) and Telstra (ASX: TLS) shares are trading 2.65% and 3.2% lower, respectively, after paying out strong dividends to shareholders.

Outside the S&P/ASX 20 (ASX: XTL), Fleetwood (ASX: FWB) and Bluescope Steel (ASX: BSL) are lower by 18% and 15% respectively. Conversely, results from Challenger (ASX: CGF) and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank (ASX: BEN) have pushed their shares higher.

Rivkin global analyst Tim Radford said "the market is slowly trading back towards 5,200 as commodity prices improve under a weakening US dollar and as investors go searching for higher return assets out[side] of bonds and cash".

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Motley Fool contributor Owen Raszkiewicz does not have a financial interest in any of the mentioned companies.

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