Australian Stocks: What Happened Today?

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ASX Top Gainers & Losers plus Market Snapshot – 21 March 2014

Gold takes one last dash to the downside before finding support, Copper continues to falter and global indexes have a slight reprieve from Yellen’s first press conference.

What are traders talking about today?

•    S&P/ASX200 gained 44.1 points or +0.83% on volume of $4.6 billion, closing at 5338.1.
•    Gold had plenty of volatility over Thursday and Friday with the market hitting a new recent 2 week low at 1,320.5 before finding support and rallying back up to be at $1,332.5 as I write this.
•    Copper was unable to climb back up to the 3.00 per pound level and remains in a steady downtrend, around $2.93, putting pressure on many local Aussie miners.
•    Metcash (MTS:ASX) shares closed down over 9.5 per cent after issuing a profit downgrade, suggesting their 2nd half profit could be down as much as 20 per cent.
•    The Aussie Dollar is definitely providing a lot of interest among traders who are noticing plenty of reason for the price to head lower, yet it continues to hold steady above the 90 cent mark.
•    A Chinese property developer, Zhejiang Xingrun Real Estate Company, has just defaulted on $567 million of its debt to 15 banks, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out and what other potential defaults are out there.

Economic news

•    The S&P/ASX200 index will be rebalanced at the close of trading on the 22nd of March with seven stocks being added and seven being removed.
•    There were no other noteworthy economic reports out today.

Australian sector watch

Looking over the charts

•    Another confusing day for traders who are looking for some clear direction. Unfortunately the futures cash price shows a volatile session between highs and lows but the normal cash price actually saw some nice steady gains for the whole trading day, closing right on the high.
•    As a positive, the Aussie 200 has been bought up off the lows quite successfully, which will provide a handy boost for those with a bullish bias.
•    Support at the 5290-5300 level held extremely well and now the next immediate resistance will be 5350-5365 and we’ll look for a close above those levels over the next couple of trading sessions before we get too optimistic.
•    Whilst trading at the moment may be difficult, there is still plenty of volatility on an intraday basis, allowing short term traders some potential for profit, so long as they keep a close eye on the downside and protect the downside with sensible stop losses.

ASX top 200 stock analysis

41% of stocks are showing oversold levels, 9% are showing overbought levels and 54% 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:
•    EWC    ENERGY WORLD CORPORATION    8.77%
•    SLR    SILVER LAKE RESOURCES     6.74%
•    IGO    INDEPENDENCE GROUP NL    6.04%
•    ALQ    ALS     5.01%
•    GEM    G8 EDUCATION     4.85%
Top 5 Losers:
•    MTS    METCASH     -9.52%
•    AQG    ALACER GOLD CORP    -3.81%
•    REA    REA GROUP    -3.79%
•    CMW    CROMWELL PROPERTY GROUP    -3.50%
•    OZL    OZ MINERALS     -2.75%