Energy leads the ASX higher while staples slip: Thursday 13 August 2026

Thursday brought a day of clear winners and a couple of quiet losers on the ASX. Energy stocks took centre stage, lithium names caught a lift, and the defensive corners of the market had a mixed session. As always, the day is one data point, not a verdict.

What moved today

Energy was the standout, rising 3.91% as a sector. Health care added 2.15% and utilities edged up 0.98%. On the other side, consumer staples fell 1.46% and information technology slipped 0.83%. Among individual names, Liontown Resources gained 5.51%, Pilbara Minerals added 4.27% and Deep Yellow rose 3.04%, suggesting uranium and lithium sentiment both found some support today. On the softer side, Scentre Group eased 1.77% and Karoon Energy slipped 1.14%.

The split between energy rising strongly while consumer staples fell is worth noting. It can reflect a market rotating away from defensive, income-oriented names toward more cyclical exposures. That rotation can reverse quickly, so one session rarely tells the whole story.

A lesson worth keeping

Over long periods of market history, one finding keeps appearing: staying invested through the uncomfortable stretches mattered more than almost any single buying or selling decision. The days that felt the scariest, the ones that tempted people to step aside and wait for things to calm down, were often close to the moments when staying put made the biggest difference to long-run outcomes.

That is not a call to ignore risk or to hold anything forever regardless of your circumstances. It is simply a reminder that the instinct to act during volatility often costs more than the volatility itself. A well-understood portfolio held patiently tends to do more work than a clever strategy executed nervously.

A question worth sitting with

A pattern comes up often among people who are new to investing. They spend a great deal of time trying to find the single best fund to buy next, comparing tiny differences in fees or index construction, while having only a loose sense of what they already own and how it actually behaves. There is nothing wrong with being careful before you invest, but understanding what is already in your portfolio is usually more valuable than hunting for something marginally better to add. So here is the question: when did you last sit down and genuinely work out what you already hold, and whether it still fits what you are trying to do?

That is today's note. PortLens is here to help you see your portfolio more clearly, not to point you in a particular direction. Take what is useful and leave the rest.