Australian Stock Market Report – Afternoon 6/28/13

AFTERNOON REPORT

(5pm AEST)

Happy End of Financial Year! It was a fairly uninspiring session on the Australian share market today, but over the course of Financial Year 2013 the market rose 15 per cent.

Japan's NIKKEI is up around 45 per cent on the financial year, while the US Dow Jones Index which has one more session to run is up around 16.5 per cent.

Property trusts were the standout sector today, up one per cent, while the telcos were the best performing sector of the week, up almost 5 per cent.

In company news, Metcash (MTS) shares fell 4.4 per cent to $3.52 after going ex-dividend.

Caltex (CTX) fell 11.8 per cent in the energy sector after issuing a profit warning due to rapidly falling Aussie dollar, a damaged fuel transport pipeline and a small fire at one of its refineries. Caltex, which is 50 per cent owned by Chevron, now expects net operating profit, which excludes the value of its stockpiles, to come in between $160-$175 million for the six months to June. That's substantially lower than last year's figure for the same period of $197 million.

Data today showed private sector credit (lending) rose by 0.3 per cent in May after a 0.3 per cent rise in April. Annual credit growth fell from 3.1 per cent to 3.0 per cent - the slowest pace in 21 months.

Housing credit grew by 0.4 per cent in May. Housing credit is up 4.5 per cent on a year ago, and holding near the weakest annual growth in records going back to 1976.

On the market overall, a total of 2 billion shares were traded, worth $7.4 billion. 517 were up, 541 were down and 402 were unchanged.

The Australian dollar ended the day's session at US92.62c, £0.6071 and €70.95c.

Ahead tonight, the University of Michigan confidence figures are released in the US.

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