Blue chips fall but gold shines in mixed market

Hold the champagne: the stock market has spluttered to the close of another year well in the red zone.

Hold the champagne: the stock market has spluttered to the close of another financial year well in the red zone.

But pop the Aldi spumante because in adversity there’s also joy and hope: yesterday’s 1.7 per cent surge was one of the best one-day increments for the year and tentative green shoots are sprouting across the trashed resources sector.

The record books will show the broader market (as measured by the all ordinaries index) lost 2.5 per cent, with the record high cracked in November 2007 as elusive as ever.

As with marginal seats on election night, the sectoral trends were far from uniform, with the supposedly reliable blue chips weighing on the bourse.

The S&P/ASX 200 index lost 4.13 per cent, while the elite ASX20 stocks were whacked by almost 12 per cent.

The malaise at the top end prompted fund managers to go further down the evolutionary chain for value, showering the mid-cap wallflowers with unaccustomed love.

Sector by sector, the energy sector fared the worst, declining 25 per cent despite the belated oil price bounce. Weighed down by the banks, the financial sector declined almost 9 per cent and the usually reliable telcos swooned 6 per cent as Telstra struggled.

The normally reliable health and utility sectors showed their defensive chops with gains of about 18 per cent.

Given that, the gold sector deserves its gold medal as the bourse’s best performer and by a wide margin — up 85 per cent.

Of the top 10 ASX stocks, half were goldminers, the best being Saracen Minerals, which gained 136 per cent.

For the first time in many years, the winners’ list was heavily biased to resources, with the iron ore-exposed Fortescue Metals and Mineral Resources gaining 89 per cent and 107 per cent respectively.

Speaking of recovering battered sectors, APN News & Media emerged as the best S&P/ASX200 performer with a 662 per cent gain. Sadly, the stunning gain reflects the sprawling group’s tidying up of its local and NZ print assets rather than a triumphant revival of the old media stocks.

The year again saw investors overlook one of the most crucial positives for the sharemarket — record low interest rates — in favour of focusing on wave of negative influences.

First it was the Greek austerity vote (remember that?), then it was China’s pending economic explosion and tumbling oil and iron ore prices.

The US economy ran hot and then cold, but unlike Goldilocks’ porridge, it was never just right.

Speaking of bears — and there were far more than three — the spectre of a property downturn meant bank valuations were a lightning rod for high anxiety.

At least the post-Brexit sell-off appears to have been judged as the mother of all overreactions.