Reuters: Hot Stocks: Australian shares slip, U.S. fiscal stand-off weighs

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Australian shares slip, U.S. fiscal stand-off weighs Dec 21st 2012, 05:35 Tweet Share this Email Print Fri Dec 21, 2012 12:35am EST (Updates with comments, details) SYDNEY, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Australian shares slipped 0.2 percent on Friday pulled down by shares in mining and gold as news of a Republican collapse in the U.S. "fiscal cliff" wrangle weighed on investor sentiment leading up to the Christmas break. Miners BHP Billiton Ltd and Rio Tinto Ltd both lost 0.9 percent. Gold miner Newcrest Mining slipped 0.1 percent while Evolution slumped 6.4 percent. Republican lawmakers delievered a stinging rebuke to their leader, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, on Thursday when they failed to back an effort designed to extract concessions from President Barack Obama in fiscal cliff talks. "News of the Republican non-vote threw a spanner in the works," said Tim Waterer, senior trader at CMC Markets. "The rosier-looking morning sentiment had taken a more solemn tone by the afternoon, with traders pulling in the reins on a market advance given the stagnated U.S. budget talks." The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index was 10.5 points lower at 4,623.6, still near the highs reached earlier this week. The market has advanced 13.8 percent over 2012. "There are many moving parts to the ongoing fiscal cliff discussions which makes it difficult for investors to project whether financial markets will be adopting a pro-risk or anti-risk sentiment at the commencement of 2013," said Waterer. Defensives were mostly soft with supermarket retailers Woolworths Ltd losing 0.2 percent while Wesfarmers was trading flat. Australia's no.1 telecommunications provider Telstra slipped 0.2 percent. Banks were strong, with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia leading gains, up 0.8 percent. New Zealand's benchmark NZX 50 index fell 0.5 percent or 20.7 points to 4,054.7. (Reporting by Thuy Ong; Editing by Eric Meijer) Tweet this Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/ Comments (0) Be the first to comment on reuters.com. Add yours using the box above.

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