The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index on Thursday finished up 1.8 points, or 0.03 per cent, to 6817.5, while the All Ordinaries climbed 2.6 points, or 0.04 per cent, to 7933.5.
State Street Global Advisors Australia SPDR ETF equity strategist Julia Lee said markets were continuing "to stage an impressive recovery with greed setting in despite market fragility".
"Oversold conditions, signs of 'good' bad data and the idea that central banks are becoming concerned with financial stability has seen risk assets back in favour for the time being," she told AAP.
"Liquidity is still relatively low with the last couple of days of school holidays ending this week," Ms Lee added.
The energy sector was the biggest gainer, rising 2.2 per cent after OPEC+ members agreed to a bigger-than-expected cut in output of 2.0 million barrels a day. Brent crude prices rose to a one-month high of $US93 a barrel.
"With inflation still a key concern, this latest production cut shows that while there are signs of moderation in inflation, we are still some way from stability," Ms Lee said.
Woodside was up 2.6 per cent to $34.75, Santos added 1.8 per cent to $7.75 and Beach Energy was up 0.3 per cent to $1.595.
Whitehaven Coal, the best-performing ASX200 component this year, was up 7.2 per cent to $10.46, rising above $10 a share for the first time.
Fellow coalminer New Hope was also at an all-time high after rising 2.3 per cent to $6.77, while Stanmore Resources added 8.1 per cent to a one-month high of $2.39.
The mining sector was up 0.5 per cent, with BHP rising 0.6 per cent to $40.76 and Rio Tinto lifting 0.2 per cent to $98.05. Fortescue Metals was down 0.1 per cent to $17.60.
Pilbara was up 5.7 per cent to a record high of $5.40 as the lithium miner announced chief financial officer Brian Lynn was stepping down after six years with the company.
The big retail banks were all lower, with Westpac down 1.0 per cent to $21.94, NAB dropping 0.8 per cent to $30.27, ANZ dipping 0.5 per cent to $24.39 and CBA off 0.4 per cent to $96.88. But Macquarie was up 0.7 per cent to $163.23.
In tech, Appen plummeted 11.7 per cent to a five-year low of $2.94 after the Sydney-based machine learning dataset company advised there had been no pick-up in trading conditions in August and September, as it had expected.
Appen now predicts it will make $13m to $18m in full-year earnings, half of what analysts were expecting. It blamed a slowdown in spending by the US tech giants that are its major customers.
On the flip side, Pushpay was up 4.1 per cent to $1.02 after the faith-based online donor platform added the US Army Chaplain Corps as its biggest customer.
In health care, Paradigm Biopharma was up 19.5 per cent to $1.93, for a 53 per cent gain this week. On Tuesday it announced promising results from a stage two clinical trial studying an injection to treat osteoarthritis.
The Australian dollar meanwhile was buying 65.27 US cents, from 65.16 US cents at Wednesday's close.
Looking forward, Ms Lee said attention will focus next on the monthly US jobs report due out Friday night, Australia time, as well as the start of US earnings season.
"One thing we are yet to see in this slowdown is contraction in earnings growth," she said.
"Earnings season in the US will be a big test of that with a softer earnings outlook likely to lead to softer prices."
ON THE ASX:
* The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index on Thursday gained 1.8 points to 6817.5, a lift of 0.03 per cent.
* The broader All Ordinaries rose 2.6 points, or 0.04 per cent, to 7033.5.
CURRENCY SNAPSHOT:
One Australian dollar buys:
* 65.20 US cents, from 65.16 US cents at Wednesday's close
* 94.23 Japanese yen, from 93.50 yen
* 65.77 Euro cents, from 65.08 Euro cents
* 57.55 British pence, from 56.71 pence
* 112.71 NZ cents, from 113.03 NZ cents.
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