Australian Stocks: What Happened Today?

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By Ashley Jessen

 

ASX Top Gainers & Losers plus Market Snapshot – 06 March 2014

Inching closer to new highs, the Aussie Index once again falls short of a new five and a half year high, which can be expected with the US non-farm payroll data due Saturday morning Sydney time, with ADP data suggesting another weak jobs growth month.

What are traders talking about today?   

•    S&P/ASX200 lost 0.3 point or -0.01% on volume of $3.9 billion, closing at 5445.9.
•    Crude Oil has been hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons with the last two days putting a dampener on any bullish activity as the $111 per barrel figures was too much to overcome.
•    Gold continues to forge ahead strongly and steady the ship after a strong sell off on Tuesday, with Wednesday trading showing a gain of $5.33 to $1,339.80 per ounce.
•    Coffee prices continue to storm ahead, rising a healthy 7.9 per cent as the bullish uptrend continues to gather steam.
•    Wednesday trading the US was one of the lowest volume days of the year and one must think with plenty of opportunity to take profit, that this is another positive sign for the bulls.
•    Some 45,000 Chinese millionaire investors are threatening to sue Canada for dropping their investor via scheme in January.

Economic news

•    The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released their Trade Balance data, which hit a two and a half year high, with a seasonally adjusted figured of $1.43 billion.
•    In the US overnight the ADP employment figures came out with a big downward revision from an estimated 155,000 jobs added to only 139,000 new jobs, with a consecutive round of download revisions over the last couple of months.
•    The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) provided the retail sales figures for January with a surprise rise to the upside, suggesting consumer sentiment is more positive than expected. Analysts were expected a 0.4 per cent read but the print came in at 1.2 per cent.

Australian sector watch

Looking over the charts

•    Positive buying activity after an early sell off, given the weaker Europe and US markets, looks to be a positive sign, putting the chance for a break into new blue sky territory a real possibility.
•    End of day we notice a top reversal candlestick pattern, the doji star, which is not a direct reversal pattern, at least not without confirmation. Technical traders will be looking for a confirmation or a close below Thursday’s low before taking on any risk to the short side.
•    Resistance is still looming quite large and real for end of day traders and, as mentioned, the possible break to the upside, above current resistance will be one of the most talked about events for 2014.
•    On an intraday basis the news was even more positive, with the early morning sell off bought up quickly from the intraday lows, but the rally didn’t extend more than 15 points off those lows.
•    Market action for Thursday and Friday always had a strong possibility of being weak given the importance of non-farm payroll data coming out of the US 12:30am Saturday morning Sydney time. Traders will be sitting low until that announcement is made.

ASX top 200 stock analysis

62% of stocks are showing oversold levels, 31% are showing overbought levels and 69% 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:
•    SIR    SIRIUS RESOURCES NL 8.76%
•    LEI    LEIGHTON HOLDINGS 5.66%
•    CRZ    CARSALES.COM 4.95%
•    AMP    AMP 4.15%
•    WSA    WESTERN AREAS 3.90%
Top 5 Losers:
•    ACR    ACRUX -8.61%
•    EGP    ECHO ENTERTAINMENT GROUP -3.96%
•    MRM    MERMAID MARINE AUSTRALIA -3.80%
•    BDR    BEADELL RESOURCES -3.16%
•    SMX    SMS MANAGEMENT & TECHNOLOGY -2.81%

 

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