Market finds it's scared of heights

The sharemarket made a dramatic U-turn after reaching new highs to close down sharply yesterday, ignoring the strong lead from Wall Street overnight.
After hitting a new intra-day high of 4982.6, the ASX 200 index ended 51.6 points lower at 4905.1.
The All Ordinaries lost 48.5 points to 4855.4 after touching a record high of 4926.8.
Banks, miners and retailers were mostly weaker and only a handful of companies defied the downturn.
"The index earlier came close to the 5000 mark so there's a bit of nervousness around about valuations," said Patrick Crabb, head of sales trading at Goldman Sachs JBWere in Melbourne.
Reynolds & Co director Markus Mueller said scrap metal recycler Sims Group set the bells ringing when it reported a 37 per cent fall in half-yearly net profit to $67.9 million. Sims plunged 13 per cent or $2.20 to $14.80.
Mr Mueller said investors were reminded that the market could also go down.
"We're not following any leads from overseas, where the US and Asian markets were all up," he said. "We're definitely running our own race."
Mr Mueller said the market was bracing itself for an onslaught of information during the reporting season. "That's the biggest challenge for everyone in the market - to somehow cope with the massive amount of data over the next four weeks."
Rio Tinto lost 23c to $74.98. The miner announced a 58 per cent increase in annual net profit to $US5.21 billion ($6.89 billion) after the close of trading.
BHP Billiton retreated 49c to $25.50 and Woodside dived 64c to $45.35.
Macquarie Bank lost 45c to $63 but Childs Family Kindergartens, in which Macquarie is taking a 30 per cent stake, rose 16.5 per cent or 7c to 49.5c.
Macquarie suffered downgrades from brokers, who pulled back their earnings forecasts and raised doubts about the investment bank's plans to roll out new specialist funds.
Goldman Sachs JBWere analyst James Freeman cut his forecast for the bank's annual net profit by 10 per cent to $875 million, with further downgrades to the following two financial years.
Shares in the big four banks lost ground. Westpac fell 28c to $23.31, National Australia Bank 7c to $34.48, ANZ Bank18c to $25.01 and Commonwealth Bank 50c to $44.
Adelaide Bank slid 62c or 4.6 per cent to $12.80. The regional bank said it was on target to deliver cash earnings per share growth of more than 10 per cent for 2005-06 as first-half net earnings rose 24 per cent to a record $41.39 million.
In media, PBL fell 4c to $16.50 and John Fairfax 4c to $4.24.
Telstra fell 3c to $4.07.
Citigroup analyst Tim Smeallie reduced Telstra to "sell" from "hold" after the shares rallied 8.2 per cent from a December 13 low.
Telecom NZ gained 15c to $5.30 despite posting a $NZ466 million ($424 million) net loss for the first half.
Transport investment group Australian Infrastructure Fund fell 4c to $2.21 after posting a 14.2 per cent decline in first-half net profit to $39.6 million.
In retail, Coles Myer dropped 11c to $10.32 and Woolworths eased 21c to $17.05 but David Jones added 6c $2.26.
Goldminer Newcrest fell 69c to $26.01, Lihir 7c to $2.34 and Newmont 3c to $8.14.