Shares stuck in mud of a weaker property sector

The stockmarket closed lower yesterday after dropping away in afternoon trading, pulled down by a weaker property sector.
It fell despite a positive lead from US, European and Japanese markets and a positive performance by miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.
"We saw quite a bit of pressure on some of the bigger names in the property sector, which was where most of the negative focus came from," CMC Markets market analyst David Land said.
It appeared that investors believed that stocks in the property sector were fully valued, he said.
The spectre of higher interest rates could also be weighing upon the property sector.
Mr Land said there also appeared to be investor resistance once the major market indices reached 5900 points.
"Today and yesterday, we had pretty decent leads and our market hasn't been able to carry on," he said.
The ASX200 closed 14.7 points lower at 5861.9 while the All Ordinaries was down 10.2 points to 5846.3.
Punters on the Sydney Futures Exchange kept their optimism even as the June share price index contract closed down 12 points at 5910; still, that's 48 points over the physical.
In the property sector, Westfield Group fell 46c to $20.35, Stockland was down 10c at $8.40, Gandel Group's CFS Retail off 6c at $2.22, GPT off 7c at $4.85, and Macquarie Goodman reversed 16c to $7.09.
Global miner BHP Billiton was 9c better at $28.77 and Rio Tinto improved 55c to $76.10.
Woodside Petroleum was 15c weaker at $35.95, Santos steady at $9.54, and Oil Search a penny richer at $3.43.
The big banks were mixed. NAB was down 1c at $40.12, the Commonwealth up 13c at $49.64, Westpac up 9c at $25.82, and the ANZ down 2c at $29.00.
Target Bendigo Bank sagged 5c to $17.10 as it weighed up a $2.5 billion offer from Bank of Queensland, itself up 7c to 6.92.
Leading Lloyd's member QBE was up 27c to $31.71, having raised $452 million from dividend reinvestment and underwriting arrangements to help fund two recent acquisitions in the US.
AXA Asia Pacific too was up, 8c to $7.27, but AMP was down a deaner to $10.16 and IAG off 6c at $5.75.
Upmarket department store chain David Jones reversed 3c to $4.45 despite posting a 30 per cent lift in first-half profit. Coles rose 4c to $15.68 and Woolworths shed 15c to $27.65.

Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd stepped up 15c to $18.90 and Fairfax gave away 2c to $4.63. News Corp eased 9c to $30.40 while its non-voting stock was off 20c at $28.56.
Telstra was 1c higher at $4.35, the partly paids up 3c at $2.90, and Optus's owner, SingTel, down 2c to $2.58.
NBN owner SP Telemedia gained 3.5c to 80c as it said it would try to aggressively expand its broadband internet and mobile phone services this year.
Spot gold finished in Sydney at $659.45, up $4.32 on Tuesday's close. Lihir Gold firmed 1c to $3.17, Newmont was up 2c to $5.47 but Newcrest descended 29c to $22.35.
Newly listed Kimberley explorer 3D Resources closed at 20.5c, 0.5c above its issue price, having opened at 25c.
National carrier Qantas nudged up 1c to $5.15 as it said its regional operator, QantasLink, would expand its fleet of Boeing 717-200s to increase services.
Shares in Smorgon Steel jumped 12.5c to $2.05, Bluescope rose 6c to $9.84, and OneSteel fell 8c to $5.10 following the agreement which will allow a merger of OneSteel and Smorgon to help the sector fend off from competition from Asian steel producers.
Turnover was 1.75 billion worth $5.03 billion, with 532 up, 656 down and 356 unchanged.