Australian Stock Market Report –Afternoon September 26, 2014

IN PHOTO: Office workers are reflected as they walk past the Australian Securities Exchange building in central Sydney April 8, 2011. Singapore Exchange Ltd has terminated its $8 billion bid for Australia's ASX Ltd after the Australian government formally rejected the offer on national interest grounds and said changes to the country's financial systems were needed before the bourse could be bought by foreigners. REUTERS/Daniel Munoz

A red ending to the week

 The second half of the session on Friday saw the ASX 200 trade around the lows of the day with a sense that sellers could make an opportunistic move at any time to take the index to new lows. With the losses of recent weeks continuing to mount, the ASX 200 has now seen all of the gains for the year to date erased. At the close of the session the index is now down 1.3 per cent at 5,313.4 points. Corporate and economic news has been limited in recent days. This dearth continued into Friday leaving participants preoccupied with all the negatives associated with the bigger picture, including slowing Chinese growth and rising US interest rates amongst other things.

 There was some better news in the mining space of the course of Friday. Gold miners were able to move ahead with some conviction after the price of the yellow metal recovered from 8 month low during the Asian session. In the last day gold prices rose with the Comex gold futures quote higher by US$2.40 an ounce or 0.2% to US$1,221.90 per ounce. These gains were extended in local time with prices trading beyond the $1226.00 level. As result Newcrest Mining Limited (NCM)rose to $10.54, a gain 2.1 per cent.

 BHP Billiton (BHP) announced that it has partnered with Mexican oil group Pemex to develop deep water petroleum assets. Pemex, which is owned by the Mexican government, has agreed to exchange technical expertise with BHP in the wake of recent reforms which have liberalised the country's oil and gas industry. BHP owns energy assets in a host ofcountries including the U.S, Trinidad and Tobago & Pakistan. BHP's earnings from energy are currently less than 30% of its total and this latest initiative is seen as an effort to expand the reliance on energy. BHP shares were down 1.8 per cent to $34.16 at the close of the Aussie session.

 Mining Services group MasterMyne (MYE) which provide maintenance and mining services in Queensland and NSW announced that it had acquired Diversified Mining Services(DMS Group), for $20 million. DMS Group was established in 2009 and is focussed on delivering maintenance, engineering and contract mining services to the coal industry. The Group operates throughout the Bowen Basin, Gladstone, Mackay and the Hunter Valley in the mining, downstream processing, prime contracting and mining infrastructure industries. Additionally, DMS Group is a specialist in overwater scaffolding. Earlier this year the group was awarded a five year, multi-million dollar contract for the provision of scaffolding services at the Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal. MYE shares were down 5.3 per cent to $62.50 at the close of trade.

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