SYDNEY: The Australian sharemarket has swung into the red at noon, with Woolworths, Wesfarmers and Qantas all losing more than 1 per cent.
At 12.05pm (AEDT), the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was down 24.4 points, or 0.47 per cent, at 5202, while the broader All Ordinaries index had fallen 23.7 points, or 0.45 per cent, at 5253.3.
IG market analyst Evan Lucas said Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens had doused investor hopes for an imminent rate cut during a speech last night.
“The interbank market is pricing in a 30 per cent chance of a cut and that positioning is more likely to be hedging in the swaps market rather than a genuine belief that a cut is coming,” he said.
The benchmark had opened up 0.3 points as cautious investors sought low-risk assets after Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border. Wall Street enjoyed small gains as energy stocks improved on overnight increases in the oil price in the wake of the incident.
Elsewhere, iron ore hit its lowest price since 2005 after extending a six-week retreat that has seen 25 per cent wiped off the commodity’s value, falling below the $US44 a tonne mark.
In local economic news, ABS data found construction work decreased faster than expected in the September quarter.
Consumer staples were the weakest on the market, down 1.16 per cent overall as the supermarkets slid.
Woolworths lost 1.66 per cent to $23.65 while Wesfarmers was down 1.2 per cent to $38.71.
Financial stocks were 0.63 per cent softer on the whole, as Commonwealth Bank shares fell 0.53 per cent to $79.22 after it said it would shell out $80 million in refunds to 200,000 customers for failing to apply discounts.
