Australian Stock Market Report – Midday 1/16/14

MID-SESSION REPORT
(12.10pm AEDT)

The Australian share market is performing well in early trade on the back of gains in European markets and on Wall Street overnight, and in spite of disappointing local jobs numbers which have sent the Australian dollar to a three year low.

22, 600 jobs were lost in the Australian economy in December, versus market expectations of a gain of 10,000. The unemployment rate is holding at 5.8 per cent while the participation rate was at 64.6 per cent last month.

The Australian dollar has fallen to a three year low of US88.08c on the jobs numbers. It started the day's trade at US89.17c.

In company news, Rio Tinto (RIO) shares are performing well after the miner reported record iron ore shipments at its Pilbara mine in 2013. RIO produced 266 million metric tonnes of the commodity last year, and shipped 259 million tonnes, up 5 per cent on last year.

Newcrest Mining (NCM) shares are also performing well, up 6.7 per cent on a firmer gold price and broker upgrade.

Woodside Petroleum (WPL) is also rising, after announcing it is expecting to sell more oil in 2014 than last year. WPL has forecast a target range of 86 to 93 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe).

There has been a bit of a switch out of some of the banking stocks while the info tech sector is down 0.1 per cent.

So far on the market, 787 million shares have changed hands, worth $1.9 billion. 487 are up, 284 are down and 284 are unchanged.

Across the Asian region, the NIKKEI is up 0.7 per cent in the early session while the TOPIX is higher by 0.9 per cent and South Korea's KOSPI is firmer by 0.2 per cent. The Shanghai Composite has dropped 0.2 per cent in the early session.

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