Australia Market falls on profit booking

Headline indices of the Australian financial market were lower on Tuesday, 05 March 2019, as investors locked in profits after a series of strong gains after weak lead from Wall Street overnight and after China, the country's biggest trading partner, cut its growth target for this year to 6-6.5% from around 6.5% last year. Risk appetite was further hurt on caution ahead of the outcome of the Reserve Bank of Australia's policy meeting later in the day. Most of ASX sectors were lower, with shares in with materials, industrials, and financials subsectors being notable losers. Around late afternoon, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index fell 21.31 points, or 0.34%, at 6,196.10 points, while the broader All Ordinaries declined 25.01 points, or 0.4%, at 6,277.50.

ECONOMIC NEWS: Australia's current account deficit has narrowed 33% to A$7.2 billion in the three months to December as higher commodity prices boosted the value of exports. The current account deficit decreased from the September quarter's A$10.78 billion, Tuesday's seasonally adjusted figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed. In seasonally adjusted chain volume terms, the balance on goods and services was a surplus of A$1.24 billion, down on the September quarter surplus of A$2.02 billion. That is expected to detract 0.2 percentage points from growth from the December quarter GDP when the data is released on Wednesday.

 

CURRENCY: The Australian dollar was little changed against the U.S. dollar on Friday. The Australian dollar was quoted at $0.7091, the same as on Monday.

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