ASX steady amid Brexit nerves; WiseTech gains

The ASX has finished flat following a sluggish day amid more uncertainty over Brexit negotiations.

Sluggish day on the ASX.

The Australian share market has finished flat following a sluggish day amid more uncertainty over Brexit negotiations.

The benchmark ASX 200 index finished Wednesday up 0.9 points, or 0.01 per cent, to 6673.1 points, while the broader All Ordinaries was down 0.4 points, or 0.01 per cent, to 6778.2 points.

With British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit bill in limbo trading on the ASX was in a narrow range throughout the day.

Telecommunications shares were the biggest losers, falling 0.9 per cent, while property trusts the biggest gainers, rising 0.6 per cent.

Other sectors from industrial to energy kept gains under 0.4 per cent.

WiseTech Global surged 8.5 per cent to $28.53 after resuming trading as it rejected all claims of financial impropriety and irregularity made by Beijing-based short sellers J Capital Research.

“We continue to strand strongly by our strategy, our technology and our business model, all of which together fuel significant growth and global expansion,” WiseTech founder and chief executive Richard White said.

The banking sector was mixed, with Westpac down 0.2 per cent to $28.91 after the bank

said it will take a $341m hit to its second half earnings, as it continues to finalise its customer compensation and remediation programs. For Westpac this takes the total for the year to $1.13bn.

NAB was down 0.5 per cent to $28.87, while ANZ gained 0.2 per cent to $27.89 and Commonwealth rose 0.4 per cent to $79.94.

In the mining sector, BHP rose a single cent to $35.40, Rio Tinto was up 0.4 per cent to $89.80 as it flagged it could close an unprofitable aluminium smelter on New Zealand’s South Island and Fortescue Metals rose 2.2 per cent to $8.71. Online furniture retailer Temple & Webster rose 3.3 per cent to $2.02 after announcing trading was up 45 per cent in the first few months of the 2020 fiscal year.

Kogan, also an online retailer, rose 1 per cent to $7.04 after the online retailer said its first-quarter profit increased by more than 28 per cent on the previous year. Hemp pharmaceutical company Botanix Pharmaceuticals fell 47.9 per cent to 12.5 cents after a clinical trial of its acne drug candidate showed mixed results.

The Australian dollar was buying 68.46 US cents from 68.59 US cents on Tuesday.

Around the region Asian stock markets followed Wall Street lower Wednesday after major companies reported mixed earnings.

Benchmarks in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul declined, while Tokyo gained 0.4 per cent. US shares retreated, led by a tech sell-off,as investors weighed mixed earnings from McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble and other big companies. That blunted investor optimism that had been fed by hopes for progress in settling a damaging US-Chinese tariff war.

The president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said he would recommend the other 27 nations in the trade bloc grant Britain’s request for an extension to its October 31 deadline to withdraw.

Britain wants a three-month delay until the end of January 2020. Parliament passed a law forcing Prime Minister Boris Johnson to seek the postponement.

“Alongside Brexit, the relatively mixed set of earnings out of the US overnight provides poor leads for Asia markets,” said Jingyi Pan of IG said.

AAP, with Agencies