I may be biased or may have clouded judgment on CSL but if it...

I may be biased or may have clouded judgment on CSL but if it were the issue with the US hospitals we would have seen an immediate drop in the SP at 10am. This issue has been known for some time and having yet another hospital added to the list can not possibly have an impact of this magnitude on the SP.

It would be fair to say that a number of factors should have benefited CSL today;

- stronger US dollar
- traders pulled out cash from miners and banks and it would be reasonable to expect more defensive stocks to step up a bit today as TLS/TAH did;
- the US state of emergency regarding the flu is a favourable situation for CSL

All of that did not help...so what it may be?

I think it still was the broker buying up any available stock on offer. If this is correct we will see a notice tomorrow morning with more shares bought back then on any previous day over the last 3-5 trading sessions. Perhaps around 800K-1M?

What else?

I think our market overreacted today and people were selling across all sectors. We did not go up by as much as the Americans did last week, nor we went down on FRI and MON as much as the Americans did...but today I think we went into the preemptive mode in anticipation of what is going to happen tonight in the USA.

QUOTE:

Bell Potter senior adviser Stuart Smith said investors were retreating from the equity market to lock in recent gains.

‘‘You’re seeing money taken off the table and you’re seeing buyers just pulling back their bids and taking stock at lower prices,’’ Mr Smith said. ‘‘A lot of stock have enormous amounts of profits in them.

END OF QUOTE

This can not possibly be the case with CSL therefore I think it can be contributed to dual impact of the broker's action and overreaction/panic selling.