Goodness, shares rise again

The sharemarket closed in the black again - that's two up days in a row - following a good US lead, with banks and consumer staples performing strongly.
The ASX 200 closed 44.5 points, or 0.8 per cent, higher at 5666.1, while the All Ordinaries was up 46 to 5745.8.
CommSec market analyst Savanth Sebastian said the National Australia Bank and Commonwealth Bank led the financial sector.
NAB was up 99c to $30.11 and the Commonwealth was up $1.19 to $45.86. The ANZ gained 27c to $22.87 and Westpac rose 47c to $23.99.
Suncorp-Metway, though, was down 13c to $15.15.
QBE Insurance plunged $2.92 to $25.75, with the market shrugging off a 30 per cent increase in its annual profit to $1.925 billion.
Mr Sebastian said a stronger Wall Street after two large US bond issuers received positive credit ratings had a big effect. The Dow Jones industrial average had closed 189.2, or 1.53 per cent, higher at 12,570.22.
"MBIA retained its triple A credit rating and Ambac [both bond insurers] was also given that rating but it is on review. Still, it's certainly better than what the market expected," he said.
"Tonight we get US producer prices, consumer confidence numbers, home price numbers and the manufacturing index, which the market will be looking at tomorrow.
"It's all leading into the US GDP numbers, which will come out towards the end of the week."
A poor performer yesterday was ABC Learning Centres after the company reported a 42 per cent fall in first-half profit to $37.1 million.
"Directors in the company hold margin positions over the stock and have reiterated that they will not be selling unless it is absolutely necessary," Mr Sebastian said. ABC Learning closed $1.60 lower at $2.14.
"Base metals were weaker overnight … which saw a bit of profit-taking in the resources sector," Mr Sebastian said.
BHP Billiton dipped 30c to $38.75 while Rio Tinto shed $1.75 to $133.68.
Australia's largest supermarket chain, Woolworths, gained $1.22 to $30.23 after posting a 28.1 per cent increase in first-half net profit to $891.3 million.
Wesfarmers, the owner of Australia's second largest retailer, Coles, rose $1.91 to $41.05 and the upmarket department store chain David Jones did even better, rising 22c to $4.32.
The energy sector was mixed. Woodside rose 17c to $55.95, Santos dipped 40c to $11.81 and Oil Search dropped 11c to $4.42 but Beach was up 5.5c to $1.46.

Either ABC's kidding us or some punters have made a killing

The company's results, released late in the day, contain plenty of bad signs.

Either ABC Learning is totally misleading the market or the child-care centre operator's shares were an historic buying opportunity yesterday, when they fell from $3.74 to a low of $1.15 in frantic trading before buyers ran them up to a close of $2.14.
The December-half profit ABC posted late on Monday betrayed earnings pressure. After-tax earnings were down 37 per cent and earnings quality was low, with contributions of $26.2 million coming from liquidated damages paid by developers for non-performance on contracts, and another $51 million of revenue booked as a surplus between the book value of a British child-care group and the price ABC paid for it.
Operating cash flow went from plus $27.1 million to negative $19.8 million, and the result was weighed down by a leap in finance costs from $22.2 million to $80.6 million. There was a $17.8 million one-off payment on December's consolidation of $1.43 billion of bank debt with a syndicate that includes Australia's big four banks.
But interest payments were also up from $18 million to $62.8 million as ABC digested aggressive expansion into the US and British child-care markets.
ABC reported shareholders equity of $2.23 billion at December 31. But the group counts intangible assets of $3.06 billion that have been built up by multiple acquisitions, and the interim profit represented just 1.7 per cent of stated funds employed.
The result was ugly, in other words, and the market reaction was magnified by the knowledge that the slide would almost certainly trigger margin calls and share sales by investors, including founder Eddy Groves and other ABC directors.
Reports in the market that the share price plunge would put ABC in breach of a $2 billion market capitalisation covenant imposed by the banks were rejected by ABC, which says the $2 billion limit relates to assets minus liabilities, plus $600 million in unsecured convertible notes issues in mid 2007. That total was $2.8 billion at December 31 - but ABC is now valued by the market at just $1 billion.
So it's tight, alright. But ABC also insists that it is not only profitable but on track to boost earnings by 15 per cent in the full year when, it says, 75 per cent of earnings before interest, tax and depreciation are earned in the US, as well as 60 per cent of Australasian earnings and 65 per cent of British earnings.
It's arguable that ABC should not have traded yesterday, as rumours swirled. But it did - and an astonishing one-third of the company changed hands, with retail investors selling heavily. The shares closed at $2.14 and, if ABC's guidance is real, the buyers are set. It's that simple, underneath the complications.

YEARS of outstanding growth in revenue and profitability have set the bar very high for Woolworths chief executive Michael Luscombe and the question being asked in recent months was whether he could clear it. Yesterday he did, by the financial equivalent of a country mile.
The retail group's 20 per cent December-half lift in earnings before interest and tax, 28 per cent jump in post tax earnings and 26 per cent increase in earnings per share sends a tough signal to Wesfarmers' boss, Richard Goyder, who would love some competitive breathing space as he tries to get the group's new Coles retail arm back into the game.
Goyder will not get the oxygen he wants. Luscombe is driving a business that is accelerating, not decelerating as some had believed, and he is expanding the Woolies formula of investing for growth.
Woolworths is extracting sensational returns from a low yield industry. In the December half, the group's supermarkets boosted same store sales by 6.8 per cent, expanded its gross profit margin by 35 basis points to 23.69 cents in the dollar, and cut its cost of doing business by 14 basis points, to expand earnings before interest and tax as a percentage of sales by 53 basis points, to a 5.74c in the dollar.
Earnings before interest and tax expanded by 19.3 per cent and the gap between that improvement and the lower 6.8 per cent same-store sales increase (or the 8.1 per cent increase including new selling space, for that matter) is telling: it demonstrates, as Luscombe noted yesterday, that Woolies is getting its margin expansion much more from
cost efficiencies than from higher prices.
For more than eight years Woolies has been reinvesting profits into its businesses through Project Refresh. The process delivers both lower point-of-sale prices and process improvements, in the supply chain in particular, and they, in turn, are generating profits for the next reinvestment cycle, which will expand to include New Zealand, the liquor outlets and Big W.
Capital expenditure will rise by $500 million this year to $1.8 billion as the group ramps up store refurbishments and openings and supply-chain improvements, including stock forecasting tools that have cut wastage losses on fresh food from about 15 per cent a decade ago to the high single digits.
It all means that Woolies is a difficult target as Wesfarmers attempts to reclaim lost market share for Coles. Pricing is not a chink in its armour, even after the group's decision to respond to customer complaints by eliminating differential pricing in its supermarkets across the nation.
Done badly, that change could have left Woolies exposed to selective discounting. But Luscombe claims to have achieved uniform prices by bringing higher prices down to the lower ones. The cost, he says, was considerable. He won't say how much, but whatever it was, margins expanded anyway.

King gets lesson in margin lending

Some investors yesterday made a truckload of money out of ABC Learning Centres. But it's a fair bet that the chief executive and main shareholder, Eddy Groves, will have lost a large chunk of his personal fortune.
On the face of it, it appears that Groves has been dancing the margin-lending tango - all the new vogue before the debt and equity crisis engulfed markets around the world.
Groves has borrowed money against his shares in ABC. The share price has fallen more than 60 per cent in a day and the lenders with security over this stock have probably sold them from underneath him.
This in turn creates an over-supply of stock in the market and magnifies the falls.
Then there are hedge funds that may have taken a bet on the ABC stock falling and "shorted" the stock, further exacerbating the falls.
Before you weep for Groves, understand that hedge funds don't just pick some random stocks to bet on. They choose shares that they believe have potential to go down, ahead of the rest of the market.
They look for companies that could be feeling some potential pain - or at least could be perceived to be feeling some pain.
And they play on the fear in the market.
In this respect ABC Learning was a clear target. It has been on a three-year acquisition spree that has left it highly geared in a bear market that now has a near-hysterical aversion to debt.
The next ingredient is that it operates in the US market where consumers are stretched and many would be inclined to cut back on child care.
And last - but certainly not least - there would be an understanding that at least one major shareholder had borrowed against their holding and would be vulnerable to a fall in the share price.
Enter Eddy Groves and ABC Learning.
All this situation needed was a bit of bad news and, after the close of trading on Monday afternoon, that is just what Groves provided.
No matter which way Groves spins it, the result reported was lousy. It wasn't bad enough to explain the massive collapse in the company's share price yesterday but it was bad enough to hand the control of the share price over to the short sellers.
It was also enough to push Groves into hastily convening a telephone press conference in Melbourne to assure the market that the fundamentals of his business remained sound.
He assured us that the company had not breached any debt covenants (despite the fact that analysts suggested that it might have).

The covenants relate to shareholders' funds (not a problem) and funding ratios and gearing ratios (potentially a problem).
In other words, the banks only get a look-in if ABC's ability to repay interest gets too slim.
Groves also said that that there were no repayments due in the near term - as far as ABC was concerned.
Needless to say the main lenders to ABC - the Common-
wealth Bank and Westpac - will be crawling all over this. At this stage they are not suggesting they feel there is a particular risk of payment default.
But this company is one that carries plenty of debt in an economic environment where cash flows could come under some pressure.
Groves has grown this business at a rapid pace through acquisitions and has used a mixture of debt and equity. He secured a three-year debt agreement for $1.43 billion late last year and raised $600 million in unsecured convertible bonds a few months earlier.
In the year to December 31, ABC's net interest expense increased from $16.7 million to $80 million.
The quality of its earnings have also been questioned by analysts, thanks to one-off
revaluations and some future asset sales. But the bigger question remains that the market is uninformed. Investors understand that the value of their stock has roughly halved in less than a day but there is no apparent legal requirement for the chief executive to explain whether this is as the result of margin calls on his stock and some manipulation by hedge funds, or whether there are more fundamental concerns.
Such concerns are only heightened by the experience of Allco, where only this week the management told the market of deals done with its bankers - supposedly without the need for market disclosure - that render that company effectively into the hands of its creditors.

Rug pulled from ABC Learning

Shares in the child-care provider ABC Learning Centres yesterday plunged almost 70 per cent at one point after concerns arose about its ability to meet debt covenants.
Investors sold on fears that if the downturn in the US economy were to see revenues fall at ABC's 1000 US centres, then the declining value of centres could trigger a breach of the company's covenants on $1.2 billion worth of loans used to fund their purchase. It has total debt of $1.8 billion.
Margin calls on directors' shareholdings, understood to include chief executive Eddy Groves and his wife, Le Neve, put further pressure on the stock yesterday.
The shares closed at their lowest point in five years, down 43 per cent at $2.14, after recovering from lows of $1.15 in morning trading.
The spectre of declining occupancy in US centres is hanging over the stock as warnings sound that the American economy is faltering and unemployment is about to rise.
If the company were to write down the value of its US child-care licences by just $223 million, it would trigger a breach and possibly lead to forced asset sales.
Mr Groves yesterday reassured shareholders that the company had not yet breached the covenants because shareholder funds exceeded $2 billion.
According to its balance sheet, released to the market on Monday, the company has shareholder funds of $2.23 billion.
Shareholder funds is the value of assets minus liabilities, and two-thirds of its assets are listed as intangible, including its US child-care licences.
The company, which has been in a massive expansion phase in the past two years, has a negative balance of hard physical assets to intangible assets to the tune of $1.75 per share.
The company also has $1.2 billion of debt repayable in three years, and $600 million of convertible notes on a nine-year term.
It is unclear how much time the banks would give the company to repay the loans if its shareholder funds were to fall below $2 billion. At June 30 last year shareholder funds were at $1.9 billion.
Investors have been cautious about ABC's expansion in the US, where it expects most of its future growth, with shares losing nearly half their value since hitting $7.57 last May when the Singaporean fund Temasek bought a stake.
Shares peaked in December 2006 at $8.63, valuing the company at $4.1 billion.
Clime Asset Management fund manager Roger Montgomery yesterday told Bloomberg that ABC Learning was not an economically viable business in its current form.
"ABC generates a lower rate of return on the owner's equity than a term deposit. ABC was once a very profitable small business. It's now a less-than-mediocre large business," he said.
Mr Groves yesterday assured the Herald that the US licences would retain their value, even in an economic downturn, saying they were valued on a discounted cash flow method over a five-year period.
"If there was a small dip [in US earnings] you still base it over a five-year cash flow," he said.
"We haven't seen any downturn due to the recession [in the US]," he said.
He believed yesterday's fall in the share price was less to do with concerns over the ability to stay within loan guidelines and more to do with the market reaction to a 40 per cent fall in first-half profit, revealed after the market closed on Monday.
The company also plans to sell $250 million of property assets by June this year - which in itself would put its shareholder funds below the $2 billion trigger point - so it would be obliged to keep the proceeds in cash.

Market settling, finishes up

The sharemarket closed firmly in the black following a strong lead from Europe.
The ASX 200 index closed 60.7 points higher, or 1.1 per cent, at 5,619.1, hardly enough to jubilate over but heading up at least.
The broader All Ordinaries index was 54.6 higher at 5,688.6.
The mood spread to the Sydney Futures Exchange, the March share price index contract closing 21 points higher at 5,599 on a volume of 21,841 contracts, and picked up another 10 points in early evening trade.
The CommSec market analyst Juliette Saly said the solid market performance had been driven by a recovery in the banking sector and the top two miners.
"Banks and miners were what helped the European markets," Ms Saly said.
"Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton are benefiting from news of higher commodity prices but other stocks that performed well on Monday have fallen a bit, including Fortescue Metals Group, which had a big run-up when it was announced that iron ore prices were likely to jump."
Fortescue finished down 7c at $7.45 while BHP Billiton gained 74c to $39.70 and Rio Tinto was $2.50 better at $136.50.
"Some of the companies that reported today have done quite well, particularly APN News & Media, with the market very much liking its full year result," Ms Saly said.
Shares in the publisher, broadcaster and advertiser closed 24c higher at $5.04.
Other big media stocks were ever so slightly stronger. Fairfax edged 2c higher to $4.05, News Corp was up 2c to $22.21, with its non-voters down the same to $21.31, and Consolidated Media was up 1c to $4.40.
"Foster's is being punished, despite saying its earnings outlook for the year is solid. Wine sales in the US are weighing on its share price," Ms Saly said. Shares in Foster's slid 9c to $5.77.
The ANZ was up 14c to $22.60, the Commonwealth Bank lifted $1.27 to $45.27, NAB rose 95c to $30.46 and Westpac increased 65c to $23.15.
Australia's largest gold producer, Newcrest, was up 6c to $34.28 despite more than halving its profit after the $2 billion restructure of its hedge book.
Lihir Gold was 1c higher at $3.57 while Newmont's shares slid 5c to $5.28.
Woodside Petroleum was up 51c to $51.26 and Santos was down 32 cents to $13.92.
Oil Search gained 10c to $4.38 despite reporting its first drop in annual profit in five years, although it says its core oil business in Papua New Guinea remains robust.
In the retail sector, Wesfarmers fell $1.67, or 4.34 per cent, to $36.85, but rival Woolworths was 40c dearer at $27.50. Harvey Norman shed another 4c to $4.56 and the upmarket department store David Jones was up 8c to $4.13.
Australia's second largest steel maker, OneSteel, delivered a 24 per cent fall in half year profit. It closed 18c lower at $7.
Macquarie Equities issued an "underperform" on crane hirer Boom Logistics last Friday. Fair enough, some brokers call it Gloom Logistics. But there's been big volume for the last five trading days and yesterday it jacked up the Favco to the tune of 23c to get back to $1.
Total market turnover reached 1.45 billion shares worth $6.22 billion, with 604 shares up, 588 down and 352 unchanged.

US buying and higher metal prices lift week

The sharemarket finished the week stronger following a buying spree on Wall Street and better base metal prices.
At the close the benchmark ASX 200 index was up 61.3 points to 5658, while the broader All Ordinaries index has risen 55.6 points to 5723.9. The ASX 200 showed a fall of 224.3 points, or 3.8 per cent, for the week, compared with the previous Friday's close.
On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the March share price index futures contract was up 20 points to 5604 points on a volume of 19,923 contracts.
CMC Markets senior dealer Matt Lewis said the market had stayed in positive territory after a strong start, despite the thin volume.
"We saw some trade flows on what were considered oversold stocks." Mr Lewis said there was a good volume of trade in the financial sector, particularly in Commonwealth Bank and National Australia Bank. "Despite the banks' being in the limelight after the interest rate increase this week, CBA and NAB found some buying support."
CBA closed $1.32 better at $50.14, NAB improved 63c to $33.43, Westpac rose 35c to $24.97, and ANZ added 60c to $25.60.
But the big diversified miners were weaker as investors digested BHP Billiton's formal $US147.40 billion ($164.79 billion) bid for rival Rio. BHP Billiton closed 78c down at $36.14 and Rio Tinto shed $2 to $125.
The spot price of gold locally closed at $US909.60 a fine ounce, up $US4.10 on Thursday's $US905.50. Miners were mixed. Newcrest rose 70c to $35.70 and Lihir 13c to $3.61. Newmont dropped 7c to $5.56 after it forecast an increase in the cost of the Boddington operation in Western Australia.
In other market news, shares in RHG, formerly known as RAMS Home Loans, soared almost 24 per cent, adding 5.5c to 28.5c. RHG confirmed it has refinanced $5.25 billion in short-term debt, partly through selling $1 billion in mortgages to NAB.
Shares in pay TV provider Austar edged up 1c to $1.58 after sales of its new personal digital recorder exceeded its expectations.
On Wall Street overnight stocks had risen as relatively cheap valuations tempted investors back after a three-day losing streak that had pushed the Nasdaq index into an official bear market. The Dow Jones index was up 46.90 points to 12,247.00, the S&P 500 was up 10.46 points to 1336.91 and the Nasdaq up 14.28 points to 2293.03. Australian retailers mostly gained, with Wesfarmers up $1.83 to $39.03 and Woolworths adding 69c to $28.99. David Jones dipped 3c to $4.17.
Media companies were mixed. Fairfax rose 6c to $4.17 and Consolidated Media gained 3c to $4.48. News Corp lost 2c to $22.98, as its non-voting scrip went up 9c to $22.35. In telecommunications, Telstra added 4c to $4.57 and its instalment receipts gained 4c to $3.01 while rival Singapore Telecom gained 4c to $2.99.
The most heavily traded stock was Empire Oil and Gas with 2.6 million shares changing hands, worth $6.2 million. Its price was steady at 2.2c. Overall market turnover was 1.4 billion shares worth $4.5 billion, with 698 stocks up, 496 down and 317 unchanged.

Chinese raid on Rio could thwart BHP

The Chinese Government-owned resources group Chinalco and the US aluminium producer Alcoa have bought 12 per cent of Rio Tinto's London-listed shares in a move that could block or severely complicate BHP Billiton's plans to buy its rival.
The stake, worth £7.2 billion ($16 billion), was bought at a price that equated to a 4-for-1 offer from BHP, compared with its rejected 3-for-1 proposal. Rio shares rose 14 per cent in London last night on the news.
The stake is enough to block a hostile bid from BHP, which requires the support of 90 per cent of Rio shareholders, but by itself it could not block a scheme of arrangement for a friendly merger requiring 75 per cent support.
Chinalco and Alcoa said they did not currently intend to make a full takeover offer for Rio, but they reserved their rights to purchase more Rio shares within the next six months if BHP or another party made a firm offer for Rio.
The motive for the purchase remained unclear last night. Chinalco owns 39 per cent of the publicly listed Chinese aluminium producer Chalco, but the parent company also owns assets in copper and other metals. Alcoa's $US27 billion bid for the Canadian aluminium producer Alcan was trumped by a $US38.1 billion offer from Rio last year and there is speculation Alcoa wants to be in a position to negotiate the purchase of some former Alcan assets.
Alcoa, which last year sold a stake in Chalco for a profit, put up only $US1.2 billion of the $US14 billion of funding in a special-purpose vehicle created to buy the Rio stake. BHP's camp said it thought Chinalco and Alcoa simply wanted a seat at the table to purchase the Alcan assets. But sources close to Chinalco said the company intended to become a diversified miner.
A Rio spokesman, Ian Head, said that the Chinalco-Alcoa share purchase "reinforces our perspective that BHP has continued to undervalue Rio Tinto".
It is believed that Rio remained unclear about the consortium's intentions and expressed some surprise that the buyers were aluminium producers rather than a steel giant like Baosteel.
Most of the objections to the proposed BHP-Rio tie-up have come from steel mills, which are worried about the merged company controlling nearly 40 per cent of the world's iron ore supply.
Last month, the London Daily Telegraph reported that the investment bank Lehman Brothers had been retained to advise the Chinese on options to block the Rio bid.
Lehman was last night publicly revealed as the bank advising Chinalco and Alcoa. It is believed last night's share raid, which bought a stake from several hedge funds and other investors long on Rio shares, had been planned for some time.

Since BHP's approach in November, Rio has never rejected the logic of a combination between the two companies. But it has rejected the 3-for-1 proposal as "two ballparks" away from fair value. Last night's share raid put added pressure on BHP to significantly improve its offer before a deadline to "put up or shut up" by next Wednesday. BHP's board met yesterday in Melbourne and at that point the most likely option looked to be formalising its rejected 3-for-1 proposal.
The Liberium Capital analyst Michael Rawlinson said last night that the Chinese Government could be attempting a break-up bid for Rio, with Alcoa poised on the sidelines to pick up some aluminium assets.
"While BHP has looked to consolidate by creating a super major, the Chinese Government is leading an effort to fragment the industry," he said.
He added that the move could push BHP to consider making a "material increase" to its 3-for-1 offer.
Earlier this week, Rio released a valuation by its advisers at Macquarie Bank which said BHP could afford to pay up to 4.25-for-1 on current price-earnings ratios or up to 5-for-1 given a re-rating.
The possibility of the Chinese paying cash could change the playing field significantly.

Upward swing on an emotional roller-coaster

The Australian sharemarket rose strongly yesterday in response to a solid lead from Wall Street and higher prices for base metals.
Overnight the Dow Jones Industrial Average had risen 207.53 points, or 1.67 per cent, to 12,650.36.
The ABN Amro Morgans private client adviser Simon Ferguson said the local market was very strong, led by resource stocks that were driven by overnight price rises for commodities.
There was also strong speculation that BHP Billiton would soon make a formal takeover bid for Rio Tinto.
Mr Ferguson said the market was still volatile and investors would be keenly awaiting payroll figures to be released last night in the US that would give some indication of the health of that country's economy.
"These 200-point swings in a day still keep people on the sidelines at the moment," he said. "Our market is overreacting one day and then overcorrecting the next … It's uncertainty. Investors really don't know which way it is going."
The ASX 200 closed 192.6 points higher, or 3.41 per cent, at 5842.9, and the All Ordinaries rose 185.3 points, or 3.25 per cent, to 5882.3.
On the Sydney Futures Exchange the March share price index futures contract added 177 points to 5802, on a volume of 38,629 contracts, according to preliminary calculations.
In the resources sector BHP Billiton rose $1.50, to $38.55. Rio Tinto rose $4.31, to $127.31, as it and its joint-venture partners signed long-term contracts to supply iron ore to Hyundai Steel.
The uranium miner Energy Resources of Australia rose 97c, to $19.80, after reporting a 74.5 per cent jump in annual profit. It said the uranium market had a positive outlook.
The base metals producer Allegiance Mining rose 1c, to $1.06, after maintaining that a bid by Zinifex was inadequate.
In the gold sector Newmont fell 15c, to $6.04, Lihir fell 3c, to $3.69, and Newcrest rose 43c, to $35.36. The price of gold in Sydney was $US925 per fine ounce, down US25c on Thursday's close of $US925.25.
Woodside Petroleum rose $2.15, to $48.50, and Santos rose 66c to $12.78.
The banking sector made gains, too. National Australia Bank rose 80c, to $35.40, Commonwealth Bank rose $1.72, to $51.12, Westpac rose 94c, to $26.52, and ANZ rose 88c, to $26.89.

The banking and insurance group Suncorp-Metway rose 63c, to $15.97. It said it expected to extract greater synergies from its $7.9 billion merger with the general insurer Promina Group but has downgraded its annual insurance earnings guidance because of storm claims.
In the media sector News Corp rose 52c, to $21.92, and its non-voting stock rose 34c, at $21.31. Consolidated Media rose 1c, to $4.47, and Fairfax Media rose 7c, to $4.10.
Telstra rose 7c, to $4.41, and its instalment receipts were up 6c, to $2.85. The owner of Optus, Singapore Telcom, rose 1c, to $2.94.
The retailer Woolworths rose 60c, to $29.40, and Wesfarmers, which owns Coles, rose $2.10, to $37.40.
Agencies
FRIDAY'S MOVES
Rises 793 Falls 416 Steady 334
Mar SPI (as at 4pm) 5783.0 +158.0
ASX 200 5842.9 +192.6
Financials 6100.9 +206.0
Industrials 6053.4 +208.2
Energy 14114.3 +477.7
Volume Value 1.415b 6.312b
MONEY
$A/US¢89.57+0.43
TWI68.8+0.5
90-day bank bills7.380 +0.027
3-yr bonds (Sep '09)6.6925+0.0475
10-yr bonds (Apr '15)6.1925+0.0500