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The Aussie share market managed to fight off the heaviest of this morning’s losses, but the mild recovery was not enough to tip things green.
Despite overnight gains on Wall Street, Australian shares tumbled on news that Queensland will close its borders to New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory once more this weekend. The news comes as Victoria reports a new record for COVID-19 infections, with 725 people testing positive for the virus in the past 24 hours.
Our benchmark ASX 200 index gave up over 70 points before lunch, but a timid afternoon recovering saw this loss trimmed back to just 36 points. The index closed 0.6 per cent lower at 6001.3 points.
Gold had a lot to say about the recovery as the spot price of the precious yellow metal sits above US$2000 per ounce for the first time in history. Big ASX gold players surged ahead today, with Newcrest up 2.89 per cent, Northern Star up 4.32 per cent, and Evolution Mining up 3.73 per cent. Of the 20 biggest gold stocks by market cap, only Saracen closed red, down by 0.99 per cent.
Our iron ore producers were mixed, with BHP up 0.08 per cent and Fortescue Metals up 0.77 per cent. Rio Tinto put a damper on the materials sector, however, after announcing it would face the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry Committee for blasting a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site in a quest to expand its Brockman 4 iron ore mine. The company closed 1.06 per cent lower.
The financials sector dragged the market down as investors sold lenders exposed to bad debts. NAB led the losses among our big four, down 1.34 per cent. Westpac lost 0.95 per cent and ANZ lost 0.29 per cent. Commonwealth Bank, however, pulled itself up by the bootstraps and actually managed to close 0.28 per cent higher.
Health care stocks fell hard today as CSL lost 1.77 per cent and Cochlear lost 2.83 per cent. Ramsay Health Care closed 2.19 per cent lower.
Across the Pacific, it’s a mixed day for major Asian indexes. As the ASX closes shop, the Asia Dow is down just 0.01 per cent and the Nikkei 225 is down 0.16 per cent. Meanwhile, the Hang Seng is up 0.42 per cent and the Shanghai Composite is up 0.17 per cent.
The Aussie dollar is stronger again this afternoon, currently buying 71.78 US cents, 54.88 pence, and 12.46 South African Rand.
Today’s ups and downs
Junior nickel miner Poseidon Nickel (ASX:POS) had a happy day after revealing solid results from a drilling hole at the recently-discovered Golden Swan deposit at its Black Swan Project. This is only the second intersection at the prospect but returned results of a 7.6-metre hit grading 8.8 per cent nickel at a true width of 4.3 metres. Shareholders were impressed and Poseidon shares closed 50 per cent higher at 4.8 cents a pop.
The opposite was true for TNT Mines (ASX:TIN), with the company slumping after revealed uranium and vanadium exploration results from its East Canyon Project in Utah. Despite reporting “encouraging high-grade assay results”, investors didn’t like it. TNT shares lost 15.38 per cent to close worth 16 cents each.
