Australian Stocks: What Happened Today?

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01 October 2013 ASX Market Summary – Invast Financial Services

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) kept rates on hold as expected and despite negative leads from the US overnight and the shutdown of the US government now official, our S&P/ASX 200 was actually quite resilient throughout the trading session, closing the day down a mere 12.1 points or 0.23% on light volume of $3.1 billion.

Interest rates remain steady at 2.5% with RBA Governor Glenn Stevens remaining quite neutral on the global economic conditions. Capital city house price data has come out suggesting a strengthening in the vicinity of 1.6% in September and 3.7% over the whole third quarter with many economists concerned about a housing bubble. Chinese PMI was also out for September coming in weaker than expected at 51.1 versus an expectation of 51.6.

Only one standout sector today with Industrials showing the others how to trade higher as the sector managed to push forward by 0.56% with Health Care the only other sector in the black, rising a meagre 0.05%. Whilst there were no outstanding losers we did see both Materials and Information Technology stocks falling the most, down 0.82% and 0.76% respectively.

Looking over the charts

Quite a few economic announcements out today paved the way for a very volatile and choppy trading session for the S&P/ASX 200 with the market ending the day almost unchanged as it found early morning lows before a 40 point rally that then got sold off into the close. The 5200 level will be the mark closely watched by technical traders as the previous resistance is now turning into potential support with our market hitting just above those levels today. This is setting the scene for a 100 point range bound trade with plenty of potential opportunities between the support and resistance. Range bound traders should be closely monitoring their setups to look to buy weakness and sell strength.

ASX top 200 stock analysis

23% of stocks are showing oversold levels, 17% are showing overbought levels and 60% of stocks are currently above their long term moving average as of close of trading today.

S&P/ASX 200 Gainers and Losers

Senex Energy ((SXY)) was one of the top 5 losers yesterday but today’s 4.75% gain turned that around to almost be square for the 2 days of trading on lighter than average volume with momentum still building to the upside. Boart Longyear ((BLY)) has been struggling immensely of late sitting right on critical support levels and today’s 3.45% will provide little relief for concerned investors who desperately need some positive moves to the upside.

Top 5 gainers:

SENEX ENERGY +4.76%
BOART LONGYEAR +3.45%
SOUTHERN CROSS MEDIA GROUP ((SXL)) +3.40%
GWA GROUP ((GWA)) +2.96%
ARISTOCRAT LEISURE ((ALL) +2.81%

Ausdrill ((ASL)) was unable to turn around the negative bias over the last 2 days with another 6.07% fall to push the stock price below the most recent support level at $1.50, with the $1.47 close a worrying sign for those long the stock. Sirtex Medial ((SRX)) has been steadily climbing since May this year with today’s 5.80% fall on rising volume an unusual sign and giving many long the stock some interesting levels to think about going forward.

Top 5 Losers:

AUSDRILL -6.07%
SIRTEX MEDICAL -5.80%
BEADELL RESOURCES ((BDR)) -5.43%
TEN NETWORK HOLDINGS ((TEN)) -5.17%
KAROON GAS AUSTRALIA ((KAR)) -5.06%