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On Wednesday the ASX200 continued to rotate around the 7400 area, it’s acted like a strong magnet since the last half of October, so far this month the markets remained in a tight 168-point band – with only 4 trading days remaining the local markets delivered a monthly range well under half of the calendar years average, even after soaring bond yields and inflation have shaken the confidence of many investors. If I had known at the start of the month where bond yields were today I would have called the index 5% lower, either I’m too reactive or the stock market remains…
It was one of those days today where the market had little direction – chopped around par with further weakness in technology stocks offset by buying in the Energy sector, hard to get excited one way or another and best we let the market determine where it tracks from here. As we suggested this AM, MM is technically bullish on a close above 7480 and bearish below 7300, ultimately the market will tell us where it wants to head next, however bullish the seasonal factors may be.
The ASX200 sprang back to life yesterday with the Banks and heavyweight iron ore names combining to send the index up 0.8%, finally closing right back in the middle of the last 5-weeks trading range. Complacency can be the enemy of a successful investor and it’s our opinion that after consolidating for a very similar 3-month period to this time last year the likelihood of a breakout has increased dramatically i.e. don’t assume that the current market slumber will continue:
A strong bounce back from early morning weakness today as the late sell-off in Tech shares overnight cast a shadow over the market early, however with commodities strong and strength during the Asian time zone today, the local material sector provided a strong backbone for the ASX to overcome technology weakness and finish nearly 0.8% higher – back up through 7400 in the process.
We are buying Fortescue (FMG) & taking profit on Independence Group (IGO) in the Flagship Growth Portfolio
The ASX200 tumbled 0.6% yesterday as the banks led the broad market lower, there were a few bright pockets amongst the 30% of stocks which managed to close higher with the lithium and nickel names the standouts for me. Iron ore names are slowly getting up from the canvas on news of China easing but the tourism stocks came under distinct pressure as a number of European countries languish under an ever worsening COVID 4th wave plus yesterday evening saw Air New Zealand being been forced to cancel 1000 trans-Tasman flights due to border restrictions…
Another choppy open to trade this morning with the index jumping around at shadows and that really typified the rest of the day, the broader market finishing down -0.60% weighed by the IT & Energy stocks as the Christmas rally remains illusive for now.
Many global stocks continue to hover just below recently posted all-time highs e.g. S&P500 0.4%, UK FTSE 2.4%, German DAX 0.8% while the ASX200 is set to open this morning 3.7% below its August high. You have to cast your eyes across Asia before you find markets that make us look good from a comparative performance perspective but when you look under the hood of the ASX200 its easy to comprehend why we’ve struggled against some of our western peers i.e. over the last few months we’ve seen market heavyweights BHP Group (BHP), Westpac (WBC)…
A small bounce on Friday saw the ASX200 close out the week down 0.6%, a pretty good effort considering Commonwealth Bank (CBA) plunged over $10 taking the influential Banking Sector along for the ride – it doesn’t matter how big or powerful you are the markets not tolerating mediocrity when companies report. With ongoing weakness by a number of resources stocks it was left to the growth sector, primarily IT and healthcare to provide some backbone to the local index – this was almost a mirror image of last week’s sector performance which probably helps explain why the ASX200 has gone nowhere for many weeks.
The market finished marginally higher today although was down ~1% on the week thanks to weakness amongst the financials courtesy of CBA’s disappointing update. Over the course of the week, the Financial sector was off -3.6% while the materials fell by -1.62% making it a tough ask for the broader market, IT +2% & Healthcare +1.71% did an admirable job.
