Australian Stocks: What Happened Today?

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By Ashley Jessen

 

ASX Top Gainers & Losers plus Market Snapshot – 03 March 2014

Tensions heat up between Ukraine and Russia, Dr Copper falls lower yet again and most other commodities are heading higher.

What are traders talking about today?

•    S&P/ASX200 lost 20.5 points or -0.38% on volume of $3.9 billion, closing at 5384.3.
•    Commodities are starting to rally with Wheat, Oats, Corn, Natural Gas, Gold, Silver and Crude Oil, all appreciate over 1 to 3.8 per cent in live trading.
•    Gold is about to break above previous resistance at $1,345 per ounce so technical traders will be keenly following this one.
•    33 people are dead in China following a terrorist attack by 10 assailants with knives with 130 people injured.
•    Both European and US index futures are pointing down over 1 per cent leading into the Aussie market close on Monday afternoon.
•    Copper has broken below current support levels and fast approaching the 3.15 support and it will need to hold these levels or else larger falls are very possible.

Economic news

•    This week will see over 30 high impact news events hitting the bourses, so expect some volatility going forward, culminating in the US non-farm payroll data on Friday US time.
•    The Australian Industry Group’s Australian PMI data showed a rise to 48.6 from 46.7 in the previous month, highlighting a steady improvement.
•    The RP data home value index recorded a no change month in January, which indicates a slight cooling off from the recent spate of increases month on month.
•    The TD Securities month inflation reading for February came in at 0.2% for the month on month reading, hitting 2.7% year on year. Many economists the world over are starting to consider the deflationary scenario’s, which isn’t ideal for global growth.
•    ANZ job ad figures have come in for February, indicating a 5.1% rise, which is a positive sign for an economy whose unemployment levels are rising slightly.
•    Chinese non-manufacturing PMI was released today coming in at 55 points, showing a positive read from the previous month and hitting a 3 month high.
•    Chinese Manufacturing PMI hits an 8 month low, coming in at 48.5.

Australian sector watch

Looking over the charts

•    The Aussie 200 Index sold off fairly quickly from the open, catching many traders by surprise and pushing the index below the 5350 support level to hit an intraday low of 5340.3, before the panic selling stopped and the index rose to a more respectable 5384 and well above recent support levels.
•    Today was a possible bullish hammer if this is the current low of the market and only time will tell over the next couple of days. As with all candlestick patterns, they are usually fairly ineffective on their own, so we like to combine the bullish or bearish signal with a confirmation of direction change before jumping on board. As a result, if this were a bullish reversal signal, then we’d like to see it close above the open of the day at 5404.
•    The levels from 5350-5400 are now potential support and we’d like to see these levels hold to continue our bullish bias. Failing these levels we see 5300 as the next major level of support and can see a potential bounce from here, should the market turn negative in the short term.

ASX top 200 stock analysis

26% of stocks are showing oversold levels, 23% are showing overbought levels and 65% of stocks are currently above their long term moving average as of close of trading today. View the image below to better understand overbought and oversold levels.

S&P/ASX 200 Gainers and Losers

Top 5 gainers:
•    MML    MEDUSA MINING +13.36%
•    FGE    FORGE GROUP +11.59%
•    SBM    ST BARBARA +11.43%
•    RSG    RESOLUTE MINING +10.74%
•    BDR    BEADELL RESOURCES +10.53%
Top 5 Losers:
•    MMS    MCMILLAN SHAKESPEARE -5.47%
•    LYC    LYNAS CORPORATION -4.92%
•    CDU    CUDECO -4.67%
•    ASL    AUSDRILL -4.62%
•    AWC    ALUMINA -3.91%

 

Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Content included in this article is not by association the view of FNArena (see our disclaimer).