Five-day rally for Australian shares comes to a shuddering halt

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Five-day rally for Australian shares comes to a shuddering halt

By David Scutt and Reuters

The five-day rally on the ASX came to a shuddering halt on Thursday, driven by losses across all sectors except energy.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 slid 0.8 per cent to 6684.7, finishing the day near its session lows.

The rally for shares came to a shuddering halt

The rally for shares came to a shuddering halt Credit: Peter Braig

The selloff accelerated midway through the session on news that Australia's unemployment rate fell unexpectedly in September. The news saw the odds for a rate cut from the RBA next month fall sharply, pressuring those sectors regarded as being bond-proxies.

Information technology led the losses, sliding 2.4 per cent. Materials also had a day to forget, losing 2 per cent.

REITs fell 1 per cent, consumer staples 0.9 per cent while industrials, utilities, telecommunications, healthcare all shed between 0.5 to 0.6 per cent.

Financials, the largest sector by market cap, also weakened by 0.4 per cent.

Consumer staples escaped with a modest 0.1 per cent decline while energy, despite a slide in crude oil prices in Asia, bucked the broader trend with a gain of 0.2 per cent.

Despite little change in bullion prices during the session, the All Ords gold index slumped 1.5 per cent, weighed down in part by weaker-than-expected production reports for the September quarter from individual miners.

BHP fell 3.3 per cent to $34.86 after it released quarterly production figures. Rio Tinto fell 2.9 per cent to $87.22 and Fortescue Metals slipped 4 per cent to $8.16.

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Iron ore futures prices fell amid fears that demand for the steelmaking raw material will be hurt further by a bruising U.S.-China trade war.

"The negative news flow is certainly dragging iron ore prices lower," said Argonaut Securities' metals and mining analyst Helen Lau.

Woodside Petroleum closed 0.2 per cent higher at $32.12 after its quarterly production update.

Wealth manager IOOF holdings was the star performer on Thursday, surging 10.9 per cent to $7.05 on news its acquisition price for ANZ Bank’s pension assets was lower than originally contracted.

Investment manager Challenger also had a good session, jumping 5 per cent to $7.55 after reporting a lift in funds under management during the September quarter on Wednesday.

At the other end of the score board, software supplier WiseTech was hammered 10.2 per cent to $30.00 on allegations the company had overstated its profits over the past three years. Its shares were placed in a trading halt pending an announcement from the company responding to the allegations.

With Reuters. 

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