From a $500M Buyback to a 50% Crash- The ASX Stocks to Buy and Sell After This Week

ASX Stocks to Watch After This Week’s Moves

This week had everything. A surprise buyback. A shocking capital raise. Oil surging to new highs. Gold stocks are falling while gold itself sits near record highs. And a consumer staples sector quietly doing what defensive stocks do best: holding firm while everything else wobbles. Here’s our verdict on each story and what to do next week.

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Northern Star’s A$500M Buyback: Buy

Northern Star (ASX: NST) delivered two pieces of news before the market opened on Thursday. First, a solid 381,000 ounces were sold for the March quarter, keeping the company on track for its revised full-year guidance of above 1.5 million ounces. Second, and more importantly, an A$500M share buyback commencing on or around April 23.

Buybacks are one of the clearest signals management can send. When a board approves spending A$500M buying back its own stock, it’s saying one thing plainly: we think our shares are cheap. After falling more than 20% year-to-date and roughly 40% from its March highs, we believe Northern Star’s management is right. The stock has been hit hard, partly by the broader gold sector selloff and partly by earlier production guidance downgrades, but the underlying business remains cash generative with a comfortable net cash position. The full quarterly detail drops on April 22, which is the next real catalyst to watch.

Our call: Buy, with the April 22 quarterly as the key trigger.

KMD Brands’ 50% Crash: Avoid

KMD Brands (ASX: KMD), the company behind Kathmandu, Rip Curl and Oboz, lost more than half its value in a single session after emerging from a trading halt with a NZ$65.3 million capital raise priced at a 69.2% discount to its last traded price.

A nearly 70% discount is not a routine fundraiser. It signals the company had very limited options and very little negotiating power. When a board accepts terms that are dilutive, it tells you that they needed the money urgently. KMD’s lenders had made it clear: raise equity or lose the debt facility.

Making matters worse, long-serving chairman David Kirk, on the board for 13 years, announced his resignation alongside the raise. With a new CEO already in place since early 2025, this marks a complete reset of KMD’s leadership from the top down. The brands themselves are strong, and first-half sales actually grew 7.3%. But brand strength and sales growth alone don’t protect existing shareholders when the raise terms are this severe and the balance sheet is this stretched.

Our call: Avoid. Wait for at least two quarters of evidence that the turnaround is translating into profitability before considering an entry.

Oil Surges on Trump’s Iran Escalation: Energy Stocks Still Worth Holding

Trump’s escalating rhetoric on Iran pushed WTI crude above US$112 on Thursday, its highest level since June 2022, with Brent close behind at US$109, as the President vowed to ramp up attacks and offered no timeline for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Woodside (ASX: WDS), Santos (ASX: STO) and Beach Energy (ASX: BPT) have been the obvious beneficiaries throughout this conflict, and nothing changed this week.

The risk here is simple: any credible ceasefire signal and oil drops fast, taking energy stocks with it. But until that happens, Australian LNG producers remain in a structurally strong position as the world’s alternative to stranded Qatari supply.

Our call: Hold existing positions. Don’t chase at current levels, but don’t sell either.

Gold Stocks vs Gold Price: Watch Closely

Gold is sitting at around A$6,770 per ounce, near record highs in Australian dollar terms. Yet ASX gold producers are selling off. The disconnect comes from the USD gold price weakening as the US dollar strengthens on rate-fear sentiment, even though the A$ gold price remains elevated.

This kind of divergence between the metal price and producer share prices rarely lasts long. Either the gold price falls to catch up to producer sentiment, or producers recover to catch up to the gold price. We lean towards the latter, particularly given that Northern Star’s buyback this week signals that at least one major producer sees genuine value at current levels.

Our call: Watch closely. Any stabilisation in the USD gold price makes producers like Evolution Mining (ASX: EVN) and Regis Resources (ASX: RRL) interesting at current levels.

Consumer Staples: Quietly Winning

While everything else sold off, consumer staples gained nearly 2% on Thursday, outperforming every other sector on the ASX. Two things drove it simultaneously: defensive rotation from Iran war fears, bringing fresh money into non-discretionary stocks, and the ACCC’s revised Food and Grocery Code coming into force, removing a regulatory overhang that had weighed on Coles and Woolworths for months.

With Woolworths (ASX: WOW) reporting Q3 results on April 30 and Coles (ASX: COL) on May 1, the sector has a clear near-term catalyst. Both stocks have outperformed the broader ASX year-to-date, with Coles up 14% to record highs and Woolworths recovering strongly after a weak 2025. If sales numbers hold up, both stocks could push higher.

Our call: Hold Coles and Woolworths to results. The setup heading into April 30 and May 1 is constructive.

What to Watch Next Week

Three things matter most heading into the week: any Trump statement on Iran ceasefire timing, which would immediately reprice oil and energy stocks; the direction of the USD gold price and whether producers can close the gap with the metal; and any RBA commentary on inflation and rate cut timing, given the oil-driven inflation spike.