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So here was are again - at a new 1-year and 2-year low on Les Ordinaires. Imagine all those people who piled into banks on Monday, thinking that the Cancer Fairy had brought them a future of Schmiles und Sun-schein. Imagine how they must feel today.
Imagine it, and laugh - because frankly you ought to laugh at anybody who has faith in the charlatans who run central wanking around the world. They are political hacks to a man, and in the upper echelons none of them could earn a crust in the private sector if their lives depended on it. Oh, after a career they can cruise out of the banks and into consulting jobs (pimping the rolodex), but that is not the same as having salable skills a priori. The reason they are in the bureaucracy is that they can't make a fist of life in the private sector.
Oh, they sometimes hire talented young things - when I won a Reserve Bank research cadetship (one of only 4 for the whole of Australia... and the first selected in my year) it showed that Dave Gruen and the Research team could spot a talented (and handsome) lad. But they are not the policymakers. Likewise when Craig Louis was at Treasury (giving me useful pointers while I was single-handedly replicating their macro model), he and the rest of Bruce Taplin's team were all talented. But having all the talent in the world in the Research department means nothing when your work does not affect policy in any meaningful way. The policymakers are the problem: being a researcher at Treasury or the Reserve Bank was always seen as nothing more than a stepping stone to a job at Macquarie or BT, but those who join on the policy side of things are political apparatchiks who hew to a Party agenda first and foremost.
Anyway... faith in central banks is sort-of 'out of bounds' for ridicule - genteel middle class types don't like to think that the entire edifice is designed to rape them.
In that sense it (faith in central banks, and faith in monetary and fiscal policy n general) is a bit like religious faith - for some reason those who ridicule either type of faith are seen as being rude or insensitive. I guess that stems from the same urge for mind-control that makes people cringe when someone calls retards 'retards' instead of 'otherly abled', or who calls a spastic a spastic, or who calls a mongol a mongol.
Obviously you can go further (calling all retards 'divvies' or 'tardos', or calling legless cripples 'Stumpy') but I'm not talking about schoolyard cruelty... I'm talking about continuing to use perfectly normal language, and refusing to change terminology in order to enable people to delude themselves.
A mongol is, after all, a mongol - and no amount of ginning-about with the nomenclature is going to make them normal: you could rename mongolism as "excessively gifted child syndrome" but it wouldn't change their lives (if their parents were American it would make the parents feel better - particularly if you then gave the kiddie a diploma for being excessively gifted). Any parent who thinks that changing the terminology will stop people's visceral negative reaction to their kiddie, is in cloud cuckoo land... along with the religious whackos. The world does not benefit from permitting delusional people to retain their delusions, no matter how apparently harmless.
Where was I? Oh yes... faith in central wankers versus faith in some invisible, omniscient omnipotent genocidal psycho who let his kid get nailed to a tree. Frankly, faith in central wanking is less of a mental illness than religious faith... and central banking has only indirectly abetted genocide (by helping debt-fund the new 'total' form of warfare which is not possible under a tax-as-you-go system) whereas the invisible genocidal psychopathic Sky Wizard mandated genocide (according to the foundation myth of the Chosen).
Anyhow... both ought to be remedied by a good hearty "Really? You honestly believe that?" followed by a good thirty minute grilling as to why.
As I said... despite all the intervention by the Cancer Fairy over the last little while, we're back at the lows. And the housing crisis - and the credit crisis which it is engendering - is not even one-third over. Pray yourself silly - to either God or the Reverse Wank - if you like, but frankly neither of them is going to do anything to save you.
Major Market Indices
The broad market - the All Ordinaries (XAO) - dipped reasonably hard, registering a loss of 89.9 points (1.81%), finishing at 4871.5 points. The index hit an intraday high of 4971.7 at 10:03 am, while the low for the day was 4872.4 - set at 2:50 pm Sydney time.
Total volume traded on the ASX was 1.32bn units, 10.1% above its 10-day average. The ASX's daily listing of all stocks included 1322 different 3-letter FPO's which traded (i.e., had non-zero trade volume). Of these, 318 issues rose, with volume in rising issues totalling 322.6m units; decliners numbered 727 counters, and between them they traded aggregate declining volume of 849.2m shares.
Of the 491 All Ordinaries components, 120 rose while 296 fell. Volume was tilted in favour of the losers by a margin of 2.3:1, with 278.07m shares traded in gainers while 636.08m shares traded in the day's losers.
The Index that forms the cash basis for the SFE's Share Price Index Futures - the S&P/ASX 200 (XJO) - registered a loss of 91.2 points (1.86%), closing out the session at 4814.3 points.
| Name | Close | +/-(%) |
|---|---|---|
| All Ordinaries | 4871.50 | -89.90 (1.8%) |
| ASX 20 | 2729.60 | -57.90 (2.1%) |
| ASX 50 | 4709.00 | -99.10 (2.1%) |
| ASX 100 | 3906.70 | -73.90 (1.9%) |
| ASX 200 | 4814.30 | -91.20 (1.9%) |
| ASX 300 | 4807.40 | -91.60 (1.9%) |
| ASX Mid-Cap 50 | 4848.10 | -29.60 (0.6%) |
| ASX Small Ordinaries | 2709.50 | -54.70 (2.0%) |
The "heavy hitters" of the Australian market - the ASX 20 Leaders (XTL) - was taken to the woodshed somewhat, sliding 57.9 points (2.08%), closing out the session at 2729.6 points.
Among the 20 big guns, 2 index components finished to the upside, and of the rest, 17 closed lower for the session. The 20 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 140.23m units; 2 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 17.79m shares, while the 17 decliners had volume traded totalling 117.95m units. The only percentage gainers within the index were
- Foster's Group (FGL), +$0.08 (1.45%) to $5.61 on volume of 15.4 million shares; and
- Woolworths (WOW), +$0.05 (0.18%) to $27.48 on volume of 2.4 million shares.
On the less salubrious side of the big-cap fence, the following stocks were the worst-performed within the index:
- Suncorp-Metway (SUN), -$0.6 (5.66%) to $10.00 on volume of 5.2 million shares;
- National Australia Bank (NAB), -$1.2 (4.78%) to $23.88 on volume of 8.3 million shares;
- Australia And New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), -$0.76 (4.32%) to $16.85 on volume of 10.7 million shares;
- Westpac Banking Corporation (WBC), -$0.99 (4.08%) to $23.26 on volume of 7.3 million shares; and
- Commonwealth Bank Of Australia (CBA), -$1.5 (3.45%) to $42.00 on volume of 4 million shares.
At the other end of the market-cap spectrum lie the denizens of the ASX Small Ordinaries (XSO). The small end of the market slid in line with its large-cap counterpart. The Small Ords registered a loss of 54.7 points (1.98%), closing out the session at 2709.5 points.
Among the stocks that make up the Small Caps index, 46 index components finished to the upside, and of the rest, 133 closed lower for the session.
The 194 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 302.07m units: volume in the 46 gainers totalling 57.26m shares, with trade totalling 234.31m units in the index's 133 declining components. The major percentage gainers within the index were- Citigold Corporation (CTO), +$0.02 (11.11%) to $0.20 on volume of 1.9 million shares;
- TAP OIL (TAP), +$0.07 (8.05%) to $0.94 on volume of 2.3 million shares;
- Australian Education Trust (AEU), +$0.03 (5.66%) to $0.56 on volume of 56.7 thousand shares;
- Mineral Deposits (MDL), +$0.03 (5.05%) to $0.52 on volume of 197.7 thousand shares; and
- St Barbara (SBM), +$0.01 (5%) to $0.21 on volume of 10.9 million shares.
In the red-zone of the little-stock index, the following list represents the biggest downers (in terms of percentage decline):
- Perilya (PEM), -$0.12 (35.94%) to $0.21 on volume of 5 million shares;
- Ausdrill (ASL), -$0.48 (19.35%) to $2.00 on volume of 14 million shares;
- CopperCo (CUO), -$0.06 (17.46%) to $0.26 on volume of 2.8 million shares;
- Allco Finance Group (AFG), -$0.03 (15.38%) to $0.17 on volume of 5.3 million shares; and
- OceanaGold Corporation (OGC), -$0.07 (12.96%) to $0.47 on volume of 113.3 thousand shares.
Index Changes
| Code | Name | Close | +/- | % | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XAO | All Ordinaries | 4871.5 | -89.9 | -1.81 | 968.2m |
| XFL | ASX 50 | 4709 | -99.1 | -2.06 | 331.9m |
| XJO | ASX 200 | 4814.3 | -91.2 | -1.86 | 760.6m |
| XKO | ASX 300 | 4807.4 | -91.6 | -1.87 | 846.9m |
| XMD | ASX Mid-Cap 50 | 4848.1 | -29.6 | -0.61 | 213m |
| XSO | ASX Small Ordinaries | 2709.5 | -54.7 | -1.98 | 302.1m |
| XTL | ASX 20 | 2729.6 | -57.9 | -2.08 | 140.2m |
| XTO | ASX 100 | 3906.7 | -73.9 | -1.86 | 544.9m |
Market Breadth
| ASX20 | XTO | XJO | XAO | XSO | Market | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advances | 2 | 26 | 50 | 120 | 46 | 318 |
| Declines | 17 | 68 | 138 | 296 | 133 | 727 |
| Advancing Volume | 17.8m | 156.7m | 200.1m | 278.1m | 57.3m | 322.6m |
| Declining Volume | 118m | 372.8m | 539.2m | 636.1m | 234.3m | 849.2m |
GICS Industry Indices
Among the 11 industry indices, the news was universally negative: not a single sector managed to break into the "Win" column.
Since none of the industry sectors registered a gain for the session, there is no point in burdening ourselves with the internal behaviour of advancing sectors... on to the losers.
The worst-performed index for the session was Financials ex Property Trusts (XXJ), which dipped 175.2 points (3.44%) to 4921 points. The 30 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 88.9m units; The 26 decliners had volume traded totalling 86.91m units, and 3 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 1.99m shares, The major percentage decliners within the index were
- Allco Finance Group (AFG), -$0.03 (15.38%) to $0.17 on volume of 5.3 million shares;
- Babcock & Brown (BNB), -$0.35 (14.89%) to $2.00 on volume of 9 million shares;
- Challenger Financial Services Group (CGF), -$0.18 (6.34%) to $2.66 on volume of 2 million shares;
- Sunland Group (SDG), -$0.16 (6.3%) to $2.38 on volume of 4 million shares; and
- Suncorp-Metway (SUN), -$0.6 (5.66%) to $10.00 on volume of 5.2 million shares.
Just missing out on the wooden spoon was Property Trusts (XPJ), which slid 27.6 points (1.8%) to 1504.7 points. The 21 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 119.68m units; The 14 decliners had volume traded totalling 80.19m units, and 4 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 27.54m shares, The major percentage decliners within the index were
- Centro Properties Group (CNP), -$0.01 (8.33%) to $0.11 on volume of 8.6 million shares;
- Centro Retail (CER), -$0.02 (8.11%) to $0.17 on volume of 7.4 million shares;
- Goodman Group (GMG), -$0.22 (6.73%) to $3.05 on volume of 12.5 million shares;
- Valad Property Group (VPG), -$0.02 (4.44%) to $0.43 on volume of 6.5 million shares; and
- Macquarie Office Trust (MOF), -$0.05 (4.29%) to $1.01 on volume of 14 million shares.
Third-to-last amongst the sector indices was Industrials (XNJ), which slid 75.4 points (1.56%) to 4751.7 points. The 32 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 120.07m units; The 23 decliners had volume traded totalling 90.95m units, and 6 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 17.06m shares, The major percentage decliners within the index were
- Virgin Blue Holdings (VBA), -$0.07 (11.71%) to $0.49 on volume of 15.7 million shares;
- Boart Longyear (BLY), -$0.14 (8.7%) to $1.47 on volume of 21.5 million shares;
- Hills Industries (HIL), -$0.28 (6.57%) to $3.98 on volume of 362.5 thousand shares;
- Alesco Corporation (ALS), -$0.38 (5.29%) to $6.80 on volume of 162 thousand shares; and
- Corporate Express Australia (CXP), -$0.26 (5.28%) to $4.66 on volume of 239.2 thousand shares.
Sector Indices
| Code | GICS Sector | Close | +/- | % | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XSJ | Consumer Staples | 7227.7 | -4.9 | -0.07 | 36m |
| XUJ | Utilities | 4914.5 | -28.9 | -0.58 | 29m |
| XIJ | Information Technology | 519.6 | -5.1 | -0.97 | 2m |
| XHJ | Healthcare | 9560.7 | -102.1 | -1.06 | 11m |
| XDJ | Consumer Discretionary | 1707.5 | -20.4 | -1.18 | 43m |
| XMJ | Materials | 11645.2 | -147.5 | -1.25 | 206m |
| XTJ | Telecommunications | 1429.7 | -18.9 | -1.3 | 47m |
| XEJ | Energy | 16690.4 | -245 | -1.45 | 75m |
| XNJ | Industrials | 4751.7 | -75.4 | -1.56 | 120m |
| XPJ | Property Trusts | 1504.7 | -27.6 | -1.8 | 120m |
| XXJ | Financials ex Property Trusts | 4921 | -175.2 | -3.44 | 89m |
All Ordinaries Major Movers
All Ords Volume Leaders
| Code | Name | Close | +/- | % | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CRT | Consolidated Rutile Limited | 0.36 | 0.02 | 4.35 | 54.7m |
| TLS | Telstra Corporation Limited. | 4.18 | -0.05 | -1.18 | 37.3m |
| OZL | OZ Minerals Limited | 1.27 | -0.08 | -5.93 | 33.5m |
| ORG | Origin Energy Limited | 17.00 | 0.29 | 1.74 | 23.8m |
| BLY | Boart Longyear Limited | 1.47 | -0.14 | -8.7 | 21.5m |
All Ords Percentage Gainers
| Code | Name | Close | +/- | % | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PMM | Portman Limited | 21.10 | 3.40 | 19.21 | 346.4k |
| CTO | Citigold Corporation Limited | 0.20 | 0.02 | 11.11 | 1.9m |
| TAP | TAP OIL Limited | 0.94 | 0.07 | 8.05 | 2.3m |
| AXM | Apex Minerals NL | 0.36 | 0.02 | 5.97 | 1.3m |
| AEU | Australian Education Trust | 0.56 | 0.03 | 5.66 | 56.7k |
All Ords Percentage Losers
| Code | Name | Close | +/- | % | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PEM | Perilya Limited | 0.21 | -0.12 | -35.94 | 5m |
| ASL | Ausdrill Limited | 2.00 | -0.48 | -19.35 | 14m |
| CUO | CopperCo Limited | 0.26 | -0.06 | -17.46 | 2.8m |
| AFG | Allco Finance Group Limited | 0.17 | -0.03 | -15.38 | 5.3m |
| BNB | Babcock & Brown Limited | 2.00 | -0.35 | -14.89 | 9m |
