Australian shares edged down today, on track to snap a five-session rally, as renewed tensions in the Middle East weakened investor sentiment.<\/p>\n
This follows reports that an Iranian parliamentary committee was reviewing draft legislation that would prevent US, Israeli and other “hostile” vessels from transiting the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
The flare-up in tensions threatens to halt the ASX’s recent rally.<\/p>\n
The benchmark logged record highs twice this week on optimism over a potential US-Iran deal, fading expectations of near-term rate hikes in Australia and its relative insulation from the AI-related swings that have rattled global markets.<\/p>\n
The ASX 200 fell 0.3% to 9,243 as of 12:10pm AEST. The benchmark was nevertheless set to close the week around 2.8% higher.<\/p>\n
Financial stocks fell 0.9%, and were set for their worst day since July 1.<\/p>\n
NAB lost 1.4%, leading the decline, followed by CBA and Westpac, both down 1.3%,\u00a0 and then ANZ dropped 0.9%.<\/p>\n
Still, the sector remained up more than 1% for the week.<\/p>\n
Healthcare stocks fell 1.2%, while consumer staples and discretionary stocks slipped over 0.5% each.<\/p>\n
The materials sector gained 0.3%, as fibre cement maker James Hardie surged as much as 5.4% to hit a near one-year high. The company reported a 54% jump in its first-quarter adjusted net income while also raising its annual earnings forecast.<\/p>\n
Critical mineral producers PLS and Mineral Resources added 5.4% and 1.6%, respectively.<\/p>\n
The sector was on track for a more than 6% gain for the week, set for its best week since early April.<\/p>\n
Energy stocks tracked the rise in global oil prices higher, adding 0.9%.<\/p>\n
Reporting with Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian shares edged down today, on track to snap a five-session rally, as renewed tensions in the Middle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4231,4232,4236,138,4234,219,4238,4237,111,139,4235,69,1820,4233],"class_list":["post-561432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-asx","tag-australian-dollar","tag-bitcoin","tag-business","tag-dow-jones","tag-economy","tag-live-blog","tag-live-update","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nyse","tag-nz","tag-share-market","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561432","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=561432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}