Australian Stock Report Market Wrap Up: Local shares gave up gains

Sydney - 15 January 2016: The Aussie market pared back all of the solid gains made in the morning trade to round off another bearish week with a losing session today. This is despite positive leads from Wall Street overnight.

“The top 200 index performed a 127-point turnaround that began only 30 minutes after the open,” said Chris Conway, Head of Research at Australian Stock Report.

According to Conway, “The financials were the biggest drag with the sector down 0.7% while energy and mining stocks continued to do well after bounces in commodity prices.”

All of the big four banks lost ground with ANZ Banking Group (ANZ) the worst of the lot, off 0.8%.

Among the miners, Rio Tinto put on 1.9%, while BHP Billiton (BHP) added 1.3% despite revealing a $10 billion write-down on its US oil assets. Among the oil companies Santos (STO) was the best performer adding 2.4%.

Oil Search Limited (OSH) gained 1.7% while Woodside (WPL) tacked on 0.4%. In the gold sub-sector, Newcrest Mining (NCM) shed 2.5% while Evolution Mining (EVN) added 0.7%.

Over the week, energy and mining were the worst performing sectors, both down 5%, while telcos was the only sector to advance, adding 0.6%, thanks to an equivalent rise in Telstra.