Australian Stock Market Report – Midday December 24, 2014
The Australian share market has started the Christmas Eve session with a modest gains before trading lower. Local investors shrugged their shoulder after taking in the strong gains on Wall Street overnight. US stocks posted impressive improvements following figures revealed that the final estimate of economic growth for the September quarter showed a 5.0% annualised pace, well above estimates of 4.3% additionally chain store sales were up 5.3% in the latest week, up from 4.1% in the prior week. New home sales fell 1.6% to a 438,000 annual pace in November. Personal income rose by 0.4% in November with spending up 0.6%. Home prices rose 0.5% in October to be up 4.5% on the year. US stocks were generally higher on optimism about the economy. But technology shares lagged, dragged down weakness in the biotechnology sector. At the close of trade the Dow Jones index was up by 65 points or 0.4% to a record high of 18,024 points with the S&P 500 index up by 0.2% to record highs. But the Nasdaq was lower by 16 points or 0.3%.
The gains for local shares at the open were short lived, the ASX 200 opened with a gain of 7 points and quickly moved into negative territory. At the lows of the session the market was down by 14 points
Healthcare stocks were among the weaker performers, reflecting similar fortunes for their US counterparts, which underperformed as the Dow Jones closed above the 18,000 mark for the first time. Shares in blood products group CSL were at $87.44 down 22 cents or 0.27%, while Cochlear (COH) was at $76.54 a loss of 51 cents or 0.66%.
The volatile fortunes for the mining and energy sector remained in place on Wednesday. Both sectors enjoyed buying support after commodities rose on the earlier mentioned data that showed the US economy grew at the fastest annual rate in 11 years. Brent crude rose by US$1.58 or 2.6% to US$61.69 a barrel. US Nymex crude rose by US$1.86 or 3.4% to US$57.12 a barrel.
In the mining space there were mixed fortunes with investors buoyed by the US data although the mood was contained by the fact that Iron ore fell by US$2.40 or 3.7% to US$65.60 a tonne on Tuesday. Junior miners were the noted underperformers compared to their heavyweight peers Mount Gibson (MGX) shares were at 24 cents for a loss of 0.5 cent or 2%, while Fortescue Metals Group was flat at $2.55
Major currencies have fallen against the greenback in the last 12 hours. The Aussie dollar rose from lows near US80.90c to highs around US81.40c but then fell back to US80.90c in late US trade. In early Asian trade the local unit was at 81.20 US cents.
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