News: NHF Miners, banks help Australia shares snap two-day loss

• Miners, banks led gains
• Month-end dynamics offer helping hand - analyst
• NZX 50 rose 1.2%

(Updates to close)

Australian shares ended higher on Thursday, driven by banks and heavyweight miners, as investors regained some risk appetite following a heavy selloff in the previous two sessions.

The S&P/ASX 200 index (xjo) rose 1.88% to close trade at 7,332.2 points. However, the benchmark was headed for a monthly loss of 2.7% and its first quarterly contraction since the September 2020 quarter.

Aiding sentiment were Asian shares that managed to claw back some of this week's heavy losses, and overnight gains on Wall Street.

"The last session of the month sees extreme moves as investors window dress their portfolios to gloss over their performance, lifting the market even as macro news remains weak," said Brad Smoling, managing director at Smoling Stockbroking.

"The bounce today is most likely to be short-lived as the economic downgrades are starting to deliver corporate downgrades and as elevated inflation and supply-side issues bite," said Mathan Somasundaram, chief executive officer at Deep Data Analytics.

Major Australian miners .AXMM rose 2.36%, tracking iron ore prices that soared ahead of the Golden Week holiday in China, on hopes of a recovery in demand.

The country's big mining triumvirate - BHP Group (BHP) , Rio Tinto (RIO) and Fortescue Metals (FMG) - advanced between 3.4% and 4.1%.

South32 (S32) advanced 4.1% to an over two-year high after the diversified miner said it would exercise the right to buy a 25% stake in Mozambique-based Mozal Aluminium for $250 million.

Financial stocks .AXFJ rose 1.96% on elevated Treasury yields, as the country's second-largest lender Westpac Banking Corp (WBC) added 3.3% to mark its best day since May 3.

Buy-now-pay-later firm Zip Co (Z1P) jumped as much as 6.5% to mark its best day in over two months after it agreed to integrate its technology into shopping experiences with Microsoft's MSFT.O Edge browser in the United States.

New Zealand's benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index (nz50) rose 1.2% to finish the session at 13275.8 points.