Market at Midday: Aussie stocks weaker

Market Reports

Despite a positive start this morning, the local share market has turned lower at midday led by declines in the banks, as debt concerns for Europe linger and investors continue to mull over Germany’s ban on naked short selling. Gains in the miners lifted the market in early trade as investors snapped up stocks battered in the previous session.

The S&P/ASX200 index is 42 points lower at 4,345 and on the futures market, the SPI200’s down 12.

In economic news: According to the Melbourne Institute survey of Consumer Inflationary Expectations, the median expected inflation rate fell to 3.6% in May. The survey highlights consumer concerns that Europe’s debt woes could hurt the domestic economy.

In company news: Shares in private hospitals and pathology provider Healthscope Ltd (ASX:HSP) rose 3.47% to $5.36. The company says it has received a sweetened takeover offer from a private consortium. The consortium has upwardly revised its $5.50 a share offer announced last Friday, to $5.75 a share valuing the company at around $1.82 billion. Healthscope says its board will now consider this revised offer and advises shareholders to take no action. In the meantime the company says it is performing well, having delivered compound annual growth in total shareholder returns of 36% over the past 10 years, and is well positioned to continue to deliver strong growth. For the 2009 financial year Healthscope posted profit of $72.29 million.

Shares in Downer EDI Ltd (ASX:DOW) rose 0.15% to $6.75. Downer says it has secured new orders totalling more than $300 million across the group. CEO Geoff Knox says since February 2010, the group has secured more than $1 billion of work and is on a preferred position on over $3.5 billion of projects which are expected to be awarded in the next few months. Mr Knox says excluding its preferred position status, the company has $16 billion of work-in-hand and continues to see a strong pipeline of tendering opportunities across all sectors. Downer booked a $189.38 million profit for fiscal 09.

Turning now to indices: The best performing sector at midday is the Health Care index, up 68 points at 8,398. The worst performing sector is the Financials excluding Real Estate Investment Trust index, down 52 points to 4,985.

Among the most active stocks at midday are: Goodman Group, stock steady at $0.615, Lihir Gold with shares down 1.98% at $3.96 and Telstra with shares up 0.66% at $3.04.

Looking to New Zealand and the NZSX50 is down 3 points. Taking a look at the top 4 stocks by turnover: Topping the list is Telecom of New Zealand with stock steady at $2.06, followed by; Fletcher Building, Westpac, and Kathmandu Holdings.

To gold and the dollar: Gold is trading at US$1,195.90 an ounce and the Aussie dollar is trading at 84.27 US cents.


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