Shares eased to a new five-week low this morning as Asian markets retreated following a mixed close on Wall Street overnight.
At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 17 points or 0.3% weaker at 5343 after earlier tagging its lowest level since September 21. Gains in utilities +0.5%, financials +0.2% and IT +0.2% were outgunned by losses in gold -2.3%, health -1.2% and consumer staples -1.2%.
Uncertainty on Wall Street after a mixed close overnight was reflected in soft futures this morning. Dow futures were recently off five points or 0.03%. China's Shanghai Composite slid 0.14%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 0.55% and Japan's Nikkei 0.09%.
Australian shares were slammed 1.5% yesterday after a pick-up in inflation doused hopes for more rate cuts and market heavyweight WES suffered its largest setback since the GFC.
"The prospect of a rate cut in next week's RBA meeting has fallen to 6 per cent from 15 per cent the day before, while over the coming 12 months we can see the probability of a cut has fallen from 48 per cent to 28 per cent," IG strategist Chris Weston told Fairfax.
Crude oil futures held steady near a three-week low at US$49.18 a barrel. Gold futures were 50 cents or 0.04% firmer at US$1,267.10 an ounce. The dollar was buying 76.36 US cents.
Thought we might see a tepid rebound today after yesterday's bath, but this market doesn't look interested. Further to fall? Not a lot of room to move lower if that uptrend since February is to hold. Given the failure to set a new high this month, a retest of 5200 is starting to seem possible. Trading: slow morning. Scraped half a pip out of SEA. Kinda wish I was still holding the SAS I bought at 4.9c yesterday and let go for two pips. Regrets, I've had a few...
