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The usual Christmas lull has now taken hold of markets and while the ASX edged higher today following a positive night in the US, volumes were light and conviction was low. The Utilities sector +0.70% was best on ground today supported by the Industrial stocks which edged 0.63% higher, on the flipside, the IT stocks gave back some of yesterday’s gains down by -0.92% while the supermarkets also fell.
The ASX200 closed higher yesterday in subdued trading and with only 2-days remaining until Christmas Day it’s hard to imagine anything new after stocks have traded sideways for 6-months – we may have received a plethora of economic and humanitarian news since May but equities simply haven’t moved. Wednesday only saw 56% of the ASX200 rally but with a 2.6% advance by the Tech Sector it was enough to offset an intra-day reversal in the iron ore names as the bulk commodity backed off from fresh…
A choppy but marginally positive session for the ASX today as volumes peter out ahead of the Christmas break – actually having a full week of trade before Christmas doesn’t happen very often and it seems like some in the market have taken off early – if all the red dots on my Bloomberg are anything to go by. Today the IT stocks did best with another takeover approach for Link (LNK) while a bounce back in Afterpay (APT) also helped. APT has…
Tuesday saw the Australian market continue to perform resolutely even in the face of adversity with COVID numbers starting to scare even the most optimistic amongst us especially with only 3-days until Christmas – I hope everyone’s finished their shopping! However, while holidays and our Christmas / New Year celebrations hang by a thread clearly its not all doom and gloom for the ASX when it can rally 0.86% the day after US equities fall by over 1%. The buying was broad based with a few things catching our attention:
After a flat open the ASX found it’s mojo by mid-morning and while US Futures + Asian markets were positive today, it seemed more a case of the local market leading rather than following. Yesterday the ASX was resilient which is a sign of strength + we had US stocks down ~1.2% overnight while we rallied +0.85% today which shows some backbone coming into local stocks. A number of the recent downtrodden names…
The ASX200 fought valiantly on Monday to only slip 11-points considering Magellan (MFG) tumbled over 30% and US futures literally melted before our eyes on the combination of intensifying Omicron fears and diminishing confidence in Joe Bidens ability to drive US economic expansion. Interestingly while falls reverberated across major global equity markets Australia and New Zealand held firm with the later actually managing to rally 0.38%. Overall it was a confusing day where the more one tried to make rhyme or reason of the swings the more conflicting things became, the only consistent was…
A tough session for pockets of the ASX however overall it was a fairly resilient day with a bounce back in the Healthcare & Consumer Staples stocks (i.e. the defensives) while components of the material sector also did well, namely Gold & Iron Ore as the Energy stocks provided the biggest drag, down over 3%.
From an investment perspective we’re living through fascinating times although I’m sure everybody would prefer the huge elephant in the room, COVID and its variants, would vanish as fast as it arrived. The Spanish flu which infected around one third of the world’s population only lasted around 2-years before history suggests the virus mutated itself down a path of weaker and weaker strains plus we saw a degree of heard immunity. Potentially the combination of vaccines and lockdown could result in us stretching out the COVID…
The ASX200 failed to capitalise on a few promising starts last week with CSL’s huge capital raise the main difference between a steady and the eventual disappointing week. On the sector front the value names dominated the winners enclosure led by the resources stocks while the healthcare & tech stocks had a shocker, ironically it had nothing to do with bond yields which actually drifted through the week even after the UK surprised many by hiking interest rates from 0.1% to 0.25%.
A very strong first half of the session today with the market storming to a 7350 high at 2pm before sellers took hold and we drifted lower (-50pts) into the close – clearly not a lot of conviction to hold stocks into the weekend. The heavy weight Materials were strong today, up 1.20%supported by Energy while the major drag on the other side of the ledger was IT, down nearly 4%
