Australian Stock Market Report – Afternoon 4-5-13

AFTERNOON REPORT
(5pm AEDT)

The Australian share market was unable to ride on Wall Street's coattails today, finishing lower for yet another session, and losing 1.6% over the course of the week. That's reduced the yearly gains for the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) to just over 5%. It was the fourth consecutive week the Australian share market finished in the red.

The Federal Government made changes to superannuation today. The changes to superannuation arrangements will generate $900 million over the forward estimates to 2015/16 (0.2 per cent of annual receipts) and Federal Treasury estimates that the main measure affecting earnings from superannuation assets will affect just 0.4 per cent of retirees in 2014/15.

On the market, financial stocks were the worst performers with the sector lower by 1%.

Mining stocks rebounded after some sharp selling earlier in the week, with shares in gold miner Newcrest Mining (NCM) up 1.7% to $18.80. Index leader BHP Billiton (BHP) firmed by 1.5% to $32.24 and Rio Tinto (RIO) was up 1.8% to $55.60.

Retail stocks were generally firmer, with the exception of David Jones (DJS) which was trading without rights to its dividend. DJS fell 9c to $2.91 while Kathmandu (KMD) was firmer by 3.1% to $2 and JB Hi-Fi (JBH) rose 2% to $15.24.

On the market overall, a total of 1.6 billion shares were traded, worth $5 billion. 467 were up, 456 were down and 362 were unchanged.

At 4.30pm AEDT the SFE 200 Futures Index was at 4894, down 18pts.

Ahead tonight the non-farm payrolls (employment data) is released in the US.

[Kick off your trading day with our newsletter]