Australia’s ALL ORDINARIES (INDEXASX: XAO)(ASX: XAO) index slumped 3.2% on Tuesday, following Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) and BHP Billiton Limited (ASX: BHP) shares into a sea of red.
All Ordinaries: down 3.2% at 5,930 points
ASX 200: down 3.2% at 5,833 points
The ASX’s selloff follows Friday’s steep sell-off on US stock markets, and the Dow’s falls yesterday. Some commentators, such as the ABC, are suggesting the Dow Jones’ fall is a result of rising US interest rates.
If you’re searching for reasons behind the fall, opinions are varied.
One expert compared the fall to a child who’s had too much ice cream.
“It’s like a kid at a child’s party who, after an afternoon of cake and ice cream, eats one more cookie and that puts them over the edge,” JPMorgan’s David Kelly was quoted as saying by the ABC.
Indeed, commentators seem divided on what exactly has happened, or if it really matters.
Markets in normoil.
— Michael Batnick (@michaelbatnick) February 6, 2018
Here are the shares which moved the market today.
Biggest Gainers* (*there weren’t many)
Biggest Losers
- Commbank – down 3%
- BHP Billiton – down 2.7%
- Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS) – down 3%
Amongst the Big Four banks, Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC) was the worst-performing, falling 3.1%. Suncorp Group Ltd (ASX: SUN) and Macquarie Group Ltd (ASX: MQG) fell 3.4% and 5.3%, respectively.
The selloff in Macquarie’s shares comes despite a trading update from the investment bank this morning revealing expectations of a 10% jump in full-year profit. Macquarie CEO, Nicholas Moore, said trading conditions we “satisfactory” during the December quarter. Read more here.
Magellan Financial Group Ltd (ASX: MFG), the growing global funds management business from Sydney, reported its half-year results this morning. Magellan’s profit fell 39% for the period to December 31st, 2017.
“It is important to note that this year we have some significant one-off expenses associated with the MGG offering,” Magellan Chairman Brett Cairns said. “If these one-off costs are excluded, our earnings for the period would be 63.4 per share, an increase of 25% over the same period last year.”
Outside of the sharemarket, the prices of cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple continued their fall. According to Coindesk, Bitcoin prices are just $US6,303 while Ripple is trading at $US0.62 per token. That’s down from over $US19,000 and $3.00, respectively, in December. Read more about Bitcoin’s fall here.
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