Australia Market falls 0.67%

The Australian share market has finished session in the red on Tuesday, 16 November 2021, snapping a two day winning streak, as sentiment was dampened on following a lacklustre lead from Wall Street's overnight, with investors shifting their focus to a online US-China summit aimed at calming tensions over Taiwan and other flashpoints.

At closing bell, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 declined 49.67 points, or 0.67%, to 7,420.44. The broader All Ordinaries index dropped 51.08 points, or 0.65%, to 7,747.15.

The bottom performing stocks in this index were MESOBLAST and PENDAL GROUP, down 8.7% and 4.4% respectively. The top performing stocks in this index were CHALICE MINING and VIRGIN MONEY UK PLC, up 3.7% and 2.6% respectively.

The Materials sector was the worst performer today, on the back of weaker iron ore, gold and base metals prices. BHP Group shares lost 2.6% to A$36.49, while Rio Tinto slipped 2.2% to A$89.79.

Imugene shares rose 3.5% to A$0.60 after announcing a clinical trial supply agreement with Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany and Pfizer to evaluate the safety and efficacy of its HER-Vaxx, a B-cell activating immunotherapy for the treatment of Gastric Cancer.

ECONOMIC NEWS: ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence was down 3pts to 106.0 on the second weekend of November. Consumer Confidence is now below the 2021 weekly average of 108.2 and 0.6 points lower than the same week a year ago. Consumer Confidence this week was down in NSW, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania but the exception was Queensland which had a small increase. This week's decrease was driven by Australians becoming less confident about their personal financial situations compared to a year ago and their expected financial positions this time next year.

RBA Governor Philip Lowe delivered a speech today titled Recent Trends in Inflation, during which he again disagreed with financial market pricing on the likelihood of rate hike in 2022. The economy and inflation would have to turn out very differently from our central scenario for the Board to consider an increase in interest rates next year, he said.

CURRENCY NEWS: The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 95.452 after recently rising from below 95.2. The Australian dollar changed hands at $0.7338 following an earlier high of $0.7368.

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