Australian Stock Market Report – Afternoon 7/24/13

AFTERNOON REPORT
(5pm AEST)

The Australian share market made it three wins in a row today, although it did shed earlier gains on the back of Chinese manufacturing data. At one point the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) was up by as much as 0.7 per cent after a quarterly earnings report from Apple in the US beat estimates. This week the All Ords is up 1.3 per cent.

Data released out of China today, showed manufacturing in the world's second biggest economy grew at its slowest pace in 11 months. The HSBC "flash" Purchasing Managers Index eased from 48.2 to 47.7 in June.

In local economic news, inflation (CPI) data showed that prices rose by 0.4 per cent over the June quarter, a result largely in line with expectations. This result brings inflation over the year to 2.4 per cent, well within the Reserve Bank's 2-3 per cent target range. Currently the market is pricing in a 56 per cent chance that rates will be cut in next month's RBA meeting.

Despite the weak Chinese data the miners were the best performing sector. Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) regained yesterday's lost ground, rising 4.1 per cent to $3.77. The overall S&P/ASX200 Materials sector (XMJ) was up 1.1 per cent.

The telecommunications sector was the second best performer on the market today lead by gains from Telstra (TLS).

Gains were tepid amongst the bank with the financials improving 0.5 per cent overall while the market was dragged down by consumer discretionary and health care stocks. The consumer discretionary sector was down 0.8 per cent while the health care sector was the worst performing, down 1.2 per cent.

Currency markets had a volatile day with the CPI and Chinese manufacturing data pulling the AUD/USD in opposite directions. After the CPI data the AUD rose above US93c before dropping back to earlier levels. Currently the Australian dollar buys US92.57c.

On the market overall, a total of 1.6 billion shares changed hands, worth $4.8 billion. 526 were up, 411 were down and 307 were unchanged.

At 4.30pm AEST the SFE 200 Futures Index was at 4993, up 16pts.

Ahead tonight, new home sales data is released in the US along with the ´´flash´´ manufacturing data. European manufacturing data is also due.

[Kick off your trading day with our newsletter]