Profit-takers push market lower

The Australian stockmarket has closed lower after another unsteady day of trading, with energy and gold stocks hardest hit.
Fat Prophets director Angus Geddes said there were signs of profit-taking across the board and even companies that had posted solid earnings results were being sold.
"It has been a good profit season but I just think that the market ran so hard in January that prices got ahead of themselves," he said.
The ASX200 closed down 14.4 points at 4820.6 yesterday while the All Ordinaries dropped 14.6 points to 4766.9.
On the Sydney Futures Exchange the March share price index contract ended the day down 17 points at 4792 on volume of 17,491.
Mr Geddes said the heaviest selling had been in the oil and gas stocks and gold stocks after a fall in oil and gold prices overnight.
Lower commodity prices on the London Metals Exchange also drove down the diversified miners in early trade but Rio Tinto rallied in the afternoon to close up 5c to $71.89.
The world's biggest miner BHP Billiton finished down 6c at $24.29 despite posting an Australian record interim profit of $US4.36 billion ($5.88 billion) on Wednesday.
Woodside sank 51c to $39.70, Santos 10c to $11.80, Oil Search 13c to $3.37 and Beach 3c to $1.12.
Gold stocks too were sold off with Newcrest dropping 31c to $23.67 and Lihir Gold down 6.5c to $1.985.
The price for the precious metal continued to fall, with the spot price of gold in Sydney closing at $US538.25, down $US8.50 on Wednesday's close.
Three of the four big banks defied the market gloom, with the Commonwealth climbing 15c to $44.13, NAB up 13c to $35.50, ANZ rising 14c to $24.85 and only Westpac falling, down 11c to $23.13.
AMP fell 26c to $8.36 after the financial services group posted a 7 per cent fall in net profit to $809 million for 2005.
News Corp rose 13c to $22.93 but the non-voting stock eased 2c to $21.68.
Property group Lend Lease closed down 60c at $13.65 after posting a half-year net profit of $176.6 million.
Qantas slipped 9c to $3.96 after the airline reported a 9.6 per cent fall in interim net profit to $352.6 million.