Australian Stocks: What Happened Today?

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ASX Top Gainers & Losers plus Market Snapshot – 29 April 2014

Iron Ore prices go limit down overnight forcing our miner’s lower plus the Australian banks see considerable profit taking at these lofty levels, forcing the ASX to end its 7 day winning streak.

What are traders talking about today? 

• S&P/ASX200 lost 49.5 points or -0.90% on volume of $4.6 billion, closing ­­at 5486.6.
• Japan was closed today for their Bank Holiday so the effect of today’s negative ASX close will not be felt until tomorrow.
• Iron Ore prices took a big limit down hit on the futures market yesterday, which had quite the negative effect on the leading Iron Ore miner’s here in Australia but prices seem to have stabilised somewhat.
• Off the back of the weakness seen in Iron Ore, the Aussie Dollar dropped below 0.9250, touching an intraday low of 0.9227, threatening to break through reasonable short term support at 0.9220.
• Australian Banks have had an incredible few months with the likes of ANZ (ASX:ANZ) rising from $29 in February to Tuesday’s high of $35.07, but saw a sizeable amount of profit taking step in.
• Gold has been relatively flat of late, chopping around in a short term range between $1,290-$1,305 and will need to break out of that area before any type of opportunity arises.
• Volatility across the Index, Forex and Commodity markets continue to head lower, sparking considerable warning signs among industry professionals as complacency continues to rise.

Economic news

• US pending home sales jumped higher overnight by 3.4 per cent suggesting the housing market in the US could be stabilising.
• The UK will see their preliminary GDP QonQ figures released around 7:30pm AEST on Tuesday.

Australian sector watch

Looking over the charts

• Markets tried their hardest to continue the upward momentum but were unable to overcome the amount of profit taking among the banks and Iron Ore stocks in particular.
• Today’s outside candle is also a bearish engulfing pattern coming from the overbought territory, so the short term outlook doesn’t look fantastic and we’ll start to see how committed the buyers are over the next few days.
• One positive to take from the current sell off is on the way down there are several levels of support, including 5485, 5440, 5400 and 5375.
• One thing is for sure and that is the fact that many traders will be very keen to see some sort of trend develop with recent activity extremely choppy at the top of this range and over the last few months.

ASX top 200 stock analysis

15% of stocks are showing oversold levels, 34% are showing overbought levels and 60% 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:

• GFF        GOODMAN FIELDER +5.51%
• AAD       ARDENT LEISURE GROUP +1.94%
• SKT         SKY NETWORK TELEVISION +1.66%
• TEL         TELECOM CORPORATION OF NEW ZEALAND +1.63%
• FXL         FLEXIGROUP +1.60%

Top 5 Losers:

• MGX      MOUNT GIBSON IRON -6.92%
• RSG        RESOLUTE MINING -6.87%
• SXY         SENEX ENERGY -6.71%
• KAR        KAROON GAS AUSTRALIA -5.58%
• BCI         BC IRON -5.53%