A record close on Wall Street helped Australian shares advance this morning, but the local market remained on course to end lower for the week.
The ASX 200 pared two days of sharp selling with a rise of 11 points or 0.2% to 6079 by the session midpoint. However, the rally left the benchmark index well short of the 6122 level where it started the week despite another round of record highs in the US overnight. The S&P 500 rose 0.7% and the Dow 0.81% ahead of a new quarterly company reporting season.
Here, the metals & mining sector led the recovery, rising 1.7%. Also strong: gold +0.9%, energy +0.6% and health 0.6%. Consumer staples lost 0.8% and financials 0.2%.
"Miners are getting re-rated and people are starting to recalibrate portfolios to the one sector that could see significant upside," Perpetual's head of investment strategy Matt Sherwood told Fairfax. "It appears that the resources sector in Australia is starting to diverge from the growth outlook in China - prices are gaining but China is slowing down."
A mixed morning in Asia saw China's Shanghai Composite up 0.05% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.7%, while Japan's Nikkei declined 0.22%. Dow futures were recently down six points or 0.02%.
Crude oil futures retreated 17 cents or 0.27% this morning to US$63.63 a barrel. Gold futures tacked on $1.80 or 0.14% to US$1,324.30 an ounce. The dollar was buying 78.89 US cents.
Trading: sluggish end to the week until SYA injected some excitement. Bought the pullback at 9.5c. Some days one trade is enough. Rather be busier, but can't complain after a decent week.
