A poorly-received earnings update from ANZ helped drag the ASX lower ahead of this afternoon's RBA rate announcement.
At 1pm EST the ASX 200 was 31 points or 0.5% weaker at 5925 and on track for its first loss in eight sessions following yesterday's two-year closing high. The financials sector was the biggest weight on the index, falling 1.35% after ANZ's interim result missed analyst targets.
"It's a tad below expectations," Bell Potter analyst TS Lim told Fairfax. "The costs were higher, the bad debts were lower. Normally the market takes a dim view of this."
NAB is due to report on Thursday and Macquarie Group on Friday. The gold sector fell 1.8%, telecoms 1% and IT 0.6%. Energy stocks bucked the trend with a rise of 0.5%.
The Reserve Bank met this morning and will release a rate statement at 2.30pm AEST this afternoon. The cash rate is expected to remain at 1.5%.
China's Shanghai Composite shed 0.28%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.26% and Japan's Nikkei added 0.7%. Dow futures were recently off three points or 0.01%.
Crude oil futures slid another 10 cents or 0.2% this morning to US$48.74 a barrel. Gold futures recouped $2.50 or 0.2% to US$1,258 an ounce. The dollar was buying 75.42 US cents.
Big shout-out to Jim for a sterling 18 months in the pre-market slot. You've been solid as a rock in what can at times seem a thankless role. It's a tough gig, that timeslot, turning up day after day, come hell or hangover. Don't blame you for calling time. Onya Buffet for putting your hand up. It might be that it's expecting too much for one person to do it five days a week. Perhaps some sort of 'job-sharing' arrangement might be a better model in the long term? Just thinking out loud here. Trading: very tough market at present. Lost a lot of its elasticity - too many shares going splat instead of bouncing. Lots of promising set-ups ending with losses. My trading pattern since I got back is to make money in the morning and give two-thirds of it back in the afternoon (some days 100% and a bit more). Profit in SVL this morning. TLG's ability to recover will make or break the day.
