The Australian share market has closed the session lower today dragged down by the banks like Westpac and ANZ and miners like giants BHP and Rio Tinto on fears of a slowdown in demand from China.
Today the S&P/ASX 200 Index closed 63 points lower at 4,686 and is down 21 points on week. On the futures, the SPI200’s down 57 points.
Looking to the U.S. and on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial index rose 62 points on the four trading days this week. The S&P500 Index gained a point, the NASDAQ dropped 11 points and the 100 index slipped 15 points.
To company news around this afternoon: MAp Group (ASX:MAP), formerly Macquarie Airports, has released its monthly traffic report for its portfolio of airports for October, with all four airports experiencing their strongest month of 2009. At Sydney Airport in particular International passenger numbers increased 12.5% for the month with domestic numbers up 3.6%. CEO Kerrie Mather says this is the third month in a row that Sydney traffic grew strongly in both international and domestic segments. Travellers from Australia rose 13 per cent, while visitors from the US increased 36%, China 27% and traffic from Canada up a whopping 49% at Sydney Airport. Shares in MAp Group closed 1.42 per cent lower at $2.77. Macquarie Media Group (ASX:MMG) says its subsidiary American Consolidated Media LLC has entered into a forbearance agreement with its lenders. Just last month Macquarie Media announced that ACM had breached certain covenants under its US$133.7 million business level bank facility. The company says that while the forbearance does not constitute a waiver of ACM’s covenant breaches, its lenders have agreed not to exercise their rights arising from these and certain anticipated covenant breaches until the earlier of January 29 2010. Macquarie Media Group shares closed 0.47 per cent weaker at $2.10.
Also making news today: Gas explorer Arrow Energy Ltd (ASX:AOE) says it expects continued increases in gas production and electricity sales in fiscal 2010. CEO Nick Davies forecasts a 10-fold increase in net production over the next six years as Arrow continues to build its operations overseas and bring an estimated Australian gas resource of 74,000 petajoules to market.
And cement maker Adelaide Brighton Ltd (ASX:ABC) told shareholders at its annual general meeting that it expects net profit after tax for the year to December 31 2009 in the range of $105 million and $115 million, in line with previous guidance.
Now to the best and worst performers: All sectors closed in the red today, however the sector with the smallest loss at close was the Telco Services index down 5 points at 1,131; while the sector at close with the biggest loss was the Real Estate Investment Trust index; down 19 points at 892.
The best performing stock in the S&P/ASX200 was PaperlinX shares rose 7.77% to $0.555. Shares in ING Industrial and Abacus Property Group also closed higher.
The worst performing stock was Insurance Australia Group, shares fell 6.89% to $3.92. Shares in Aristocrat Leisure and Energy World Corp also closed lower today.
The Aussie dollar is currently buying 91.99 U.S cents and is down over a cent on the week. Gold is trading at $1144.60 U.S an ounce and is up $25.80 on the week.
Finally, oil is up 53 cents at $77.99 U.S a barrel.
