Mining stocks and small caps fronted a third day of falls this week as regional markets and US futures deteriorated.
At lunchtime the ASX 200 was off 51 points or 1.1% at 4716, with defensive health stocks and property trusts the only sectors to make ground this morning. The falls were heaviest among the Small Ordinaries (-2.1%), metals & mining (-2.1%) and materials (-2%) following a bleak session overnight on industrial metals markets.
"We are still seeing weakness in global markets," Commsec market analyst Steven Daghlian told Fairfax. "Base metal prices are lower (in both) London and the US. When that happens, it puts pressure on the miners. For the last three days, we've seen miners being the worst performers. That puts quite a bit of pressure on our market."
Asian markets fell back this morning. Japan's Nikkei dropped 1.18%, Shanghai 0.89% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.28%. Dow futures were recently at -23.
The jobless rate held steady at 5% for a third straight month in February, despite a net loss of 10,100 jobs for the month.
Crude oil futures rallied 78 cents this morning to $104.89 a barrel. Spot gold eased 80 cents to $1,429.20 an ounce. The dollar was buying US$1.0093.
Brutal morning. Lots of technical damage to a host of stocks on my watchlist. I rely on setting alerts at key price levels to capture shares in pullbacks - felt like most of them went off this morning. I have pinging in my ears. Made money scalp-bouncing NMS, SSN, MGX, FGL and GXY. Still holding NWE, GBG and a second MGX.
