Market rout slows but Asian falls keep focus on weakness

The Australian stockmarket fell back to close in negative territory yesterday after initially making some headway.
Falls on Asian markets again dragged the bourse into the red but not to the same extent as Wednesday's severe sell-off.
The benchmark ASX 200 index shed 22.3 points to 5810.2 while the All Ordinaries lost 18.2 points to 5798.3.
At the close of day trading on the Sydney Futures Exchange, the March share price index contract gained one point to 5803 on a volume of 31,239 contracts.
The fall on Wednesday was the biggest one-day drop on the Australian sharemarket since the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Man Financial broker Anthony Anderson said the market recovered some ground early but falls on the Asian markets again weighed on the local bourse.
"Our market once again has been influenced by the local Asian markets," Mr Anderson said. "Tokyo is down significantly … and the Shanghai Index is down as well, so we are line with those moves.
"It did recover early on, but the Asian markets just continued on with the weakness, so we've followed that in patches.
"The miners have bucked the trend today, but the banks and the insurers have been a little weak and that really is where the main weakness is focused."
The US provided a relatively solid lead overnight with the Dow Jones adding 52.39 points to 12,268.63 and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index picking up 7.78 points to 1406.82.
The Nasdaq gained 8.29 points to 2416.15.
Locally, the big miners were stronger with BHP Billiton putting on 22c to $27.35 and Rio Tinto gaining 43c to $76.03.
The spot price of gold was slightly higher, closing Sydney trading at $US672.75 an ounce, up $US1.40 on Wednesday's local close.
The goldminers were mixed, with Newmont rising 6c to $5.67, Lihir Gold picking up 4c to $3.36 and Newcrest retreating 7c to $22.48.
The big banks were weaker, with NAB losing 46c to $39.90, the Commonwealth dropping 39c to $49.57, ANZ slipping 12c to $29.18 and Westpac falling 39c to $25.07.
Travel agency Flight Centre plunged $1.89 or 11.19 per cent to $15 after a $1.6 billion proposed management buyout was aborted.
Share registry operator Computershare shed 2c to $10.01 after the company said it would spend about $US25 million ($31.7 million) to snap up two businesses in North America and is looking for more targets.
The media sector was mixed, with Fairfax adding 3c to $4.78, News Corp gaining 4c to $29.91, its non-voting shares picking up 21c to $28.47 and PBL dropping 14c to $19.09.
The retailers were weaker with Coles dropping 4c to $15.32, Woolworths slipping 40c to $26.80 and David Jones off 4c to $4.37.
The energy sector was mixed despite a rise in the oil price, with Oil Search edging 4c higher $3.58, Woodside dropping 24c to $37.02 and Santos retreating 4c to $9.32. Junior explorer Jervois Mining was the most traded stock with 125.09 million shares changing hands collectively worth $4.33 million. Jervois added 0.5c to 3.4c.