SYDNEY: Australian shares fell on Thursday and looked set to snap a 4-day winning streak as worries over rising stockpiles hit shares of resource producers. The S&P/ASX 200 index was down 0.9 per cent, or 51.358 points, at 5,882.5 at 0248 GMT. “There’s been a decent selloff in mining stocks because iron ore’s been absolutely flogged last night, the futures market continues to gravitate lower in a raging bear market now,” said Chris Weston, Institutional lender at IG Markets. “So people are all concerned about holding materials equity here.” Iron ore on the Dalian Commodity Exchange was 0.3 per cent lower after falling to its lowest price since Jan. 10 in the previous session, while copper slid to three-month lows on Wednesday.
Crude oil futures moved away from one-month highs as worries on rising US inventories stoked concerns about global oversupply. The market also tracked Wall Street, which fell overnight on geopolitical tensions and after President Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal that the dollar “was getting too strong,”and he would like to see interest rates stay low. The materials and mining index fell 3.4 per cent as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals lost between 4.9 per cent and 6.6 per cent.
