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The local bourse has moved higher after better-than-expected earnings reports from Meta, Microsoft and Amazon led to the biggest rally on Wall Street in months, even as economic data painted a gloomy picture for the world's biggest economy.
At noon AEST on Friday, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was up 28.8 points, or 0.39 per cent, to 7,321.5, while the broader All Ordinaries had climbed 30.9 points, or 0.41 per cent, to 7,513.1.
For the week, the ASX200 was on track for its second week of losses, down 0.17 per cent with a few hours of trading left.
Friday is also the last trading day in April, with the index at midday on track for a 1.95 per cent monthly gain after losses in both March and February.
Overnight the S&P500 staged a 2.0 per cent rally, its best gains since January 6, after the strong earnings results from the US tech titans.
Separately, however, US first-quarter gross domestic product figures came in far under expectations - while the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation metric, the personal consumption expenditures index, was higher than expected.
"High inflation and slowing economic growth may lead the US economy to a stagflation era," wrote CMC Markets Auckland-based analyst Tina Teng.
Markets were now pricing in an 85 per cent chance the Fed will raise US interest rates again on Thursday, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.
The ASX's 11 sectors were mixed at midday, with six up, four down and energy basically flat.
Financials was the biggest gainer, up 1.1 per cent, with gains for all four big banks.
ANZ had risen 1.3 per cent to $24.44, Westpac had added 1.4 per cent to $22.57, NAB had grown 1.2 per cent to $29.06 and CBA was up 1.0 per cent to $100.10.
The heavyweight mining sector was up 0.7 per cent, with gains for the iron ore giants and lithium miners but losses for goldminers.
BHP and Fortescue were both up 0.4 per cent, to $44.52 and $20.95, while Rio Tinto had added 0.3 per cent to $112.52.
Pilbara had grown 5.6 per cent to $4.18 while Northern Star was down 3.2 per cent to $13.425 as gold prices slipped on the prospect of another rate rise.
Coles was down 1.9 per cent to $18.10 after the supermarket giant reported third-quarter group sales rose 6.5 per cent to $9.7 billion, in the final set of results for CEO Steven Cain before he's replaced by Leah Weckert on Monday.
Mr Cain credited Coles' "dropped & locked" value campaign and a new range of Flybuys member pricing with the sales growth, and said there had been modest improvements in supply chain availability during the quarter.
RedMed had fallen 1.3 per cent to $33.29 after reporting that third-quarter revenue grew 29 per cent to $US1.11 billion ($1.67 billion) as the respiratory condition device maker ramped up production of its cloud-connected devices to meet ongoing strong demand.
Megaport had soared 46 per cent to $5.80 after the cloud computing company announced its attempts to right-size its finances was paying off and it now expects to make around double the consensus expectations of $9 million for 2022/23.
