Afternoon sports fans,

Market Wrap

• The ASX 200 closed up 72.1 points today. Banks are back baby!
• It was a complete reversal of yesterday’s rout with the ASX200 opening up 55 and powering ahead from there with thebanks leading the way. Nerves were soothed by a US equity market that is blatantly ignoring Greece. Who? This weekend will see more games of brinkmanship as we head into yet another emergency summit on Monday. The apparent indifference to a ‘Grexit’ will only encourage the EU to take a hard line making an accidental EU exit all the more likely.

• For the week the ASX200 was up 53 points or around 1% at 5597.Volatility seems to be increasing as we bounce around looking for a direction.

• As usual the Financials were the stand out with National Bank (NAB) +1.6% andCommonwealth Bank (CBA) +1.55% but it was good to see the resource stocks chime in as BHP +1.57% and RIO +1.1% led the big miners with energy stocks also in the green. A big disappointment in the mining sector though is South32 (S32) -3.45%, the recent divorcee from big brother BHP. Seems no one wants to take them out on a date as reports of write-downs in the manganese business so soon after the separation weigh on the shares.
• Woolworths (WOW) +2.63% have had a tough week but as the shorts moved to cover their positions and the underlying yield appears to be safe for now, the stock rose ending up around 35c for the week. This story will continue to play out as bulls and bears jostle for ascendency.
• Property Trusts or REITs had a spectacular day with GPT +3.3% and Goodman Group (GMG) +4.33% as 5% yield stocks once again attracted buyers in spades.
• Some cheery news today for CSL +1.66% as one of its main rivals in the flu vaccine business, Sanofi, looks unable to meet demand in the US with its own vaccine.
• Sydney Airport (SYD) +1.96% after the company said its total passenger traffic for May rose 1.6% from a year earlier. Average load factors in international markets for May rose 2.5% points.
• In other airline stocks Air New Zealand (AIZ) +4.7% pulled out of yesterday’s dive on the Jetstar announcement.
• Big winner today in the tech space was 1Page (1PG) + 21.4% following a shareholder presentation on its SaaS human resources platform popular in the US market. The company is an early stage disruptive tech company, not quite in the Fitbit league but capped at around $160m it is priced to deliver.
• When the average life span in the job of CEO is around 4 years, amazingly Bradken(BKN) – 3.5% announced today that Chief Executive Brian Hodges would step down after nearly two decades in the role.
• Daily trading statistics since July 2012, Mondays are the only day for which trading is more negative than positive and Friday is the day with the highest positive. Of the 1,387 points increase in the All Ords since 30/6/12, 526 points, or 38% occurred on a Friday, with negative 65 on a Monday.
• Death of a thousand cuts as we experience the long grind down in the mining sector.

• Where have all the cheap holidays gone!A rising AUD trend from 2003 to 2013 saw overseas holidays/departures average booming 10% annual growth, the recent $A depreciation to a six-year low saw departures slow sharply to just 2% year-on-year.

• China is now in official correction territory after another 2% fall today, bringing up its worse weekly decline of around 10% since October 2008.
• Scary to think that new IPOs in China are accounting for nearly $1 trillion of capital at the moment. 25 floats this week alone. In that environment it’s hardly surprising that the gloss is coming off the top.
• And the Bank of Japan has vowed to continue to expand the monetary base at an annual pace of 80 trillion yen ($650 billion), it said in a statement today. It will also cut the number of meetings to 8 from 14 in line with the US Fed.

And as we head into the weekend and perhaps a round of golf, it is heartening to know that even the greatest players have a bad day. A real bad day. Tiger Woods threw his club, kicked the ground and even tried tying his shoes after a poor tee shot on the eighth hole at the opening round of the 2015 US Open. He came into the clubhouse third last. “Not very happy, that’s for sure,” said Woods after carding eight bogeys and a triple bogey with just a lone birdie at Chambers Bay. Looks like he will have the weekend free!

The Aussie is trading at US77.61c.

Have a good weekend

Clarence

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