Australian market easy

Press, 25 February 1980, Page 20

Australian market easy

The Australian sharemarket gave ground on the first four days of last week, reaching a low on Thursday of 892.54 compared with the record 947.47 of exactly one week earlier.

However, the all-ordi-naries index recovered 5.06 points on Friday, and closed at 897.60.

But gains in most sectors were fairly small as foreign investors stayed on the sidelines much of the week. Brokers said that a continuing lack of overseas money dampened hopes for as sustained recovery, although it was thought that the beginning of the accounting period for London brokers would encourage some inflow. A flood of foreign funds earlier in the month was believed to be partially the result of a widely-held view that the-Australian dollar is undervalued. There is growing speculation that the Australian Government will move soon to revalue.

Commodity prices also remained uncertain most of the week and there was a feeling that many foreign investors were waiting for a clear trend to develop.

The Sydney Stock Exchange announced that trad-

ing would revert to a twohour morning session On Monday, with trading finishing at noon instead of 12.30. The exchange has been on a 2i hour morning trading session on an experimental basis since December 3. The market leader, 8.H.P.. led the turnaround in the industrial sector with a 35c rise on Friday to $13.75 compared with $14.30 in the previous Thursday’s record session. Renewed interest came after an announcement of record steel production, of 764,000 tonnes, in January. ICI was 2c lower at 298 c, CSR fell 76c to 648 c, Pioneer Concrete was off 21c at 224 c, Ansett was firm at 220 c, and TNT gained 2c at 242 c. In the banking sector, the Bank of New South Wales was 23c lower at 325 c, the ANZ Group lost 5c at 480 c and the National Bank was down 18c at 260 c. On the mining boards, Utah lost 30c to 490 c, Coal and Allied dropped 100 c to $lO, E.Z.I. shed 100 c to 750 c, Peko lost 80c to 940 c, Bougainville fell 35c to 435 c, and M.I.M. dropped 76c to 560 c.

Diamonds were the brokers’ best friends last

week as profit-takers kept chipping away at the earlier record levels in other sectors. Interest in diamonds gave the Australian market a new lease of life on Friday.

At the centre,of attention was the Adelaide-based diamond explorer Leichardt Explorations, which capped a spectacular week by jumping 430 c on Friday to close at $1250c. Leichardt, which traded as low as 50c last year, has shot up 790 c since February 8 — on rumours of a big diamond find in Namibia (South West Africa). On Friday, the market was fuelled by a report that the company’s South African subsidiary would take up a third diamond lease in Cape Province.

Earlier in the week, local diamond hunters were boosted by an announcement that the Argyle joint-venture partners would build- a pilot diamond extraction plant at Lake Argyle in Western Australia. C.R.A., a major partner in the Ashton joint venture, recovered 16c on Friday but was still 4c down on the week, at 646 c; Ashton Mining, the consortium’s other major, recovered 10c but was still 25c lower for the week, at 320 c.