The local market headed lower on open this morning as a fear of contagion from the crash on Chinese stock markets spurs selling. At midday we were down close to 1 per cent.
The big question today is how weakness on Chinese stocks could flow onto the local market and while there are plenty of theories, mining stocks have certainly suffered today with the iron ore miners seeing some of the morning’s biggest losses.
The Aussie dollar is trading well below $US0.73 this morning.
The S&P/ASX 200 indexis 51 points down at 5,539. On the futures market the SPI is 60 points lower.
Company news
Immune therapy company Immuron Limited
(ASX:IMC) has appointed Dr Jerry Kanellos as Chief Operating and Scientific Officer. The company says Dr Kanellos has more than twenty years experience in the biotech industry having spent five year as COO at TransBio. Chairman Dr Roger Aston says Dr Kanellos’ experience in vaccine development and clinical trial management will provide great support. Shares in Immuron are trading down 4 per cent at $0.24
Newzulu Limited
(ASX:NWZ) has announced a slew of new partners this week with a Vietnamese client, Lasta Multimedia, the most recent addition. The crowdsourced news media company says the Vietnamese organisation has signed an agreement to license Newzulu Editorial content. It was also announced yesterday that an as yet unnamed major Australian TV broadcaster had also signed on to distribute content through the Newzulu news platform. Shares in Newzulu are trading up2.86 per cent at $0.07
Best and worst performers All major sectors traded lower this morning, the sector with the least losses is healthcare, dropping 0.2 per cent to 19,033. Shares in CSL Limited
(ASX:CSL) have risen 1.28 per cent and trading at $95.86. Shares in Greencross Limited
(ASX:GXL) are stronger and Virtus Health Limited
(ASX:VRT) is flat.
The worst performing sector is consumer discretionary, falling 1.4 per cent to 1,849. Shares in Corporate Travel Management Limited
(ASX:CTD)have fallen 4.44 per cent, trading at $10.12. Shares in Southern Cross Media Group Limited
(ASX:SXL) and Navitas Limited
(ASX:NVT) are also lower.
Gold and the dollar
Gold is trading at $US1,094 an ounce.
The Australian dollar is buying $US0.7274
