by Chris Becker
Coming up to lunch in the Asian session and the ASX200 is down around 0.3% while the SPI futures stand at around 5458 points or down 20 points. Instead of a small gain today following gains in Europe and US markets – check out my Macro Morning post for more – it’s the miners, big and small, that are dragging down the local bourse:
The release of the Westpac consumer confidence figures was minimal – it seems this is all because of continued falls in iron ore.
BHP is down:
RIO is down:
Junior iron ore miner Atlas Iron (AGO) is down over 3% and Fortescue (FMG) is down over 2%. I’ll have more on these two and other iron ore stocks later.
Thankfully, the banks are mainly flat or slightly up, while in consumer stocks the picture is a bit confused – short covering?
It’s a bit quiet out there too, volume wise. A little too quiet.