Australian Shares Down

In Wall Street, US stocks were showing great improvement with reports on positive earnings. The Federal Reserve has also informed the public of the continued growth of the US economy.

In fact, the Dow Jones Industrial Average garnered an additional 103.16 points with the session closing at 12,908.70. In Europe, the stock markets closed positively as well.

However, despite the good stock market news around the world, the Australian share market still opened lower unexpectedly:

• S&P/ASX200 index down 13.8 points at 4,192.9
• All Ordinaries index down 13 points at 4,223.4
• ASX 24 index down 3 points at 4,157 with 7,758 contracts traded

For the mining sectors that has been seeing a down trend this past few days, recovered a little.
• Rio Tinto at six cents higher at $53.42
• BHP Billiton at six cents higher at $31.16

For the banking sector, news isn’t positive as:
• Westpac is nine cents lower at $22.86
• National Australia bank is 13 cents lower at $23.95
• ANZ is 19 cents lower at $23.04
• Commonwealth Bank is 43 cents lower at $55.47

In other news:
• Ten Network Holdings stopped market operations today as they prepare to announce the sale of Eye Corp, their outdoor advertising business.
• Gold price in Sydney increased $2.47—$US1582.12 per fine ounce to $US1,579.71
• National turnover was 328 million securities amounting to $658 million
• 270 stocks up, 292 in the red, and 824 with no improvement

Chris Weston of IG Markets said that there is still some hesitation for people to invest in the market.