The Australian sharemarket kicked off December on a weak note as investors rotated out of defensive stocks and banks, with US futures also pointing to a weak session on Wall Street.<\/p>\n
The S&P\/ASX 200 Index fell 48.9 points, or 0.6 per cent, to 8565.2 in a disrupted session after about 80 companies were placed into lengthy trading halts following an outage that prevented the ASX from publishing market-sensitive announcements for three hours.<\/p>\n
US futures were also pointing to a fall of more than half a per cent for the US sharemarket, while bitcoin slid as much as 6 per cent to below $US86,000 in early Asia trading, further pointing to a risk-off session overnight.<\/p>\n
Bell Potter\u2019s Richard Coppleson said there was no real reason for the fall in the US futures, other than both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rallying more than 3 per cent last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe some just thought it\u2019d gone too hard in a thin market and sold them today,\u201d Coppleson wrote in a report to clients. \u201cBitcoin dropping back to US$85,876 may have also weighed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Losses on the ASX were led by healthcare, with CSL falling 1.4 per cent to $183.64 and Chemist Warehouse operator Sigma down 1.4 per cent to $2.84.<\/p>\n
Consumer staples also weakened, with Metcash tumbling 9.2 per cent to $3.36 after reporting just a 0.1 per cent rise in revenue to $8.48 billion for the half-year to October 31, missing expectation for 1 per cent growth.<\/p>\n
Financials also dragged the index lower as AUB slumped 17.8 per cent to $30.63 after ending takeover talks with suitors EQT and CVC<\/p>\n
The major banks also weighed with Commonwealth Bank falling 0.6 per cent to $151.64, National Australia Bank 0.6 per cent to $39.85, Westpac dropped 0.9 per cent to $37.26, and ANZ 1.3 per cent to $34.20.<\/p>\n
The ASX fell 2.8 per cent to $56.58 after its announcements platform suffered the lengthy outage.<\/p>\n
There was a modest rotation into commodities that helped lift the materials sector. Woodside gained 0.9 per cent to $25.16 as global oil prices rose more than 1 per cent after OPEC+ reaffirmed its planned pause in supply increases.<\/p>\n
And a 1 per cent increase in iron ore supported the major miners, with BHP rallying 1 per cent to $42.08, Fortescue rising 0.8 per cent to $21.58 and Rio Tinto 0.4 per cent to $132.76.<\/p>\n
Stocks in focus<\/p>\n
Treasury Wine fell 0.7 per cent to $5.78 as it booked a significant non-cash impairment on its US operations, writing off $687.4 million in goodwill.<\/p>\n
Healius rose 2.6 per cent to $1 after securing a five-year, $60 million contract to provide private pathology services to the Australian Defence Force.<\/p>\n
Energy One dropped 7.3 per cent to $16.38 after director Ian Ferrier said he would sell about 315,000 shares, worth roughly $5.4 million, to fund a property purchase.<\/p>\n
APA slipped 0.4 per cent to $9.22 after signing a joint development agreement with CS Energy for a gas-fired project in Queensland that is scheduled to begin operating in 2028.<\/p>\n
And Pro Medicus declined 1.6 per cent to $262.18 as it secured a new $25 million, seven-year deal with US health network BayCare, expanding its footprint in the Tampa Bay and central Florida regions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Australian sharemarket kicked off December on a weak note as investors rotated out of defensive stocks and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-162492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}