Commodities, Oil Drive ASX Lower

123jump.com Staff
03 Sep, 2008
New York City

Stocks in Sydney fell as oil and commodities prices declined for the second week in a row. The price of oil had surged nearly 100% from last June to $147 a barrel in July of this year before declining to $108 a barrel today

[R]3:00AM New York, 7:00PM Sydney - Australia GDP rises 0.3% in second quarter[/R]

Stocks in Sydney fell as oil and commodities prices declined for the second week in a row. The price of oil had surged nearly 100% from last June to $147 a barrel in July of this year before declining to $108 a barrel today’s trading.

Market Sentiment

In Sydney trading ASX 200 fell 1.09% or 56 to 5,060.00. Of the ASX 200 index stocks 85 increased, 106 declined, and 9 were unchanged. Babcock & Brown led advancers in the index shares with a rise of 10.71%.

Australia GDP Rises 0.3% in Q2

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on its Web site today that the country’s gross domestic product rose 0.3% in seasonally adjusted terms in the second quarter ended June from a revised 0.7% the previous quarter. Economists had forecasted that the economy would grow 0.4% in the quarter. However, the economy increased 2.7% from a year earlier.

The statistics bureau added that non-farm GDP gained 0.5%, while the terms of trade and real gross domestic income advanced 13.1% and 3.3% respectively.

Also in seasonally adjusted terms the main segments that impacted on increases in expenditure include machinery and equipment rising 0.9 percentage points and exports that spiked 0.5 percentage points.

Conversely, negative contributions were from imports which fell 0.6 percentage points, inventories plummeting 0.5 percentage points, engineering construction investment falling 0.2 percentage points and defense investment sliding 0.2 percentage points.

In addition, property and business services increased 0.3 percentage points, transport and storage contributed 0.2 percentage points, while agriculture, forestry and fishing shed 0.2 percentage points from GDP growth.

The report also showed that the chain price index, which gauges retail prices, jumped 4% in the quarter to June.

Gainers & Losers

Babcock & Brown led advancers in the ASX 200 index shares with a rise of 10.78% followed by gains in Emeco Holdings of 9.18%, in Babcock & Brown of 6.45%, in Henderson-CDI of 5.17%, and ABB Grain Ltd. of 5.04%.

Airliner Qantas advanced 3.12% on falling crude oil prices.

Fortescue Metals led decliners in the ASX 200 index shares with a fall of 10.19% followed by losses in Panoramic Resources of 9.78%, in Panaust Ltd of 9.47%, in Murchinson Metals of 9.21%, and Newcrest Mining of 9.02%.

Commodity stocks plunged after crude oil prices lost 8.7% to $108 per barrel and metal prices shed. Lihir Gold declined 8.14%, Platinum Australia plummeted 8.16%, Sino Gold Mining fell 7.19% and Beach Petroleum plunged 7.73%.