Australian shares have reached lunchtime unchanged as further selling in resource stocks helped erase early gains.
At lunchtime the ASX 200 was flat at 5317 after earlier running as high as 5353 following solid overnight gains on Wall Street. The big miners were a major drag for a second day, puling the metals & mining sector down 0.7%. Also weak were gold stocks -1.5%, materials -0.6%, industrials -0.2% and the Small Ordinaries -0.2%. Consumer staples +0.5% and energy +0.4% were the pick of the sectors.
"The fall is being particularly driven by the materials space," IG market strategist Evan Lucas told Fairfax. "It looks like a lot of people are positioning themselves for possibly a weak number out of China's trade balance numbers on Friday, and possible discrepancies with regard to their GDP print next Tuesday."
The market fade came despite gains in Asia after US stocks scored their first positive close of the year overnight. China's Shanghai Composite tacked on 0.62%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.86% and Japan's Nikkei 1.05%. Dow futures were recently up four points or less than 0.1%.
Crude oil futures edged up three cents this morning to US$93.89 a barrel. Spot gold was $2.80 weaker at US$1,228.20 an ounce. The dollar was buying 89.21 US cents.
So much for positive leads. The message of the last few sessions is that there is no need to buy the open until sentiment improves. I keep buying FGE near the daily lows on the expectation that one of these days it's going to bounce hard but it wasn't yesterday and doesn't look like being today. Also took GRR near its low and then sat in the sell queue watching as all the hits at my sell price went through the Chi-X. Wonderful how the instos keep coming up with new ways to load the dice in their favour.
