Resources take a wary breather

The sharemarket closed weaker yesterday, pushed down by lower prices for resources stocks despite a positive lead from Wall Street on Wednesday night.
The ASX200 closed 27 points lower at 5300.2, after earlier in the day hitting a new high of 5336.6.
The All Ordinaries fell 25.2 to 5246.9 after earlier setting a new record of 5280.
At the end of trading on the Sydney Futures Exchange, the June share price index contract was down 27 points at 5308 on a volume of 13,486.
Bell Potter senior adviser Stuart Smith said the sharemarket slipped as investors became wary of a drop in commodity stocks.
"I think there's a message permeating - to just watch any over-exuberance with the resources stocks," Mr Smith said.
"That's been the message for the last couple of days, to not be complacent that the market is just going to keep piling on points every day, because that's not the reality," he said.
"There's a little bit of caution on the big miners and, hopefully, they'll cool off and present a good buying opportunity in the next couple of weeks or so," Mr Smith said.
Mining group Rio Tinto shed $1.45 to $81.25 after announcing it and Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting had won government approval to develop the $1.3 billion Hope Downs iron ore mine in Western Australia.
Rival BHP Billiton cooled 74c to $30.28.
Alumina was steady at $7.45 as the miner said it expected substantially higher underlying earnings in the first half of 2006.
The bank sector was positive, with the Commonwealth Bank up 2c to $46.90, the NAB 19c stronger at $37.85 and Westpac gaining 17c to $25.10.
ANZ was up 19c to $28.12 after disclosing a $1.81 billion first-half net profit.
In other news, Caltex eased 42c to $19.98 after saying oil prices were not getting any better and that while the cost of petrol had risen, this was not because of increased petrol company profits.
Among the oil producers, Woodside fell 46c to $47.79, Santos lost 3c to dip to $11.99, Oil Search was $4.47, off 4c, and Beach came back from its new record, dropping 3.5c to $1.465.
Optus-parent Singapore Telecom lost 1c to $2.30 while Telstra firmed 6c to $3.88.
Telstra was the most traded stock with 78.77 million shares changing hands for a total value of $304.33 million.
Media was mixed with PBL down 9c to $18.75, News Corp up 10c to $23.94 and its non-voters 4c higher at $22.42. Fairfax waned 5c to $3.94.
Retailer David Jones gave up 4c to $2.75, Coles Myer backtracked 6c to $10.78 and Woolworths shed 25c to $18.73.
Qantas lifted 3c to $3.55 while Virgin Blue dipped 1c to $1.78 after saying it was not about to change its fuel surcharge.
The spot price of gold in Sydney was $US639.70 per fine ounce, up $US7.40 on Wednesday's close.
Newmont lifted 2c to $7.72 and Newcrest 36c to $23.15, but Lihir Gold gave up 3c to $3.24.
Market turnover was 1.47 billion shares worth $5.12 billion with 519 stocks rising, 616 falling and 333 unchanged.