Share market closes flat in worst week since September 2022

The Australian sharemarket closed flat at the end of the Friday trading session, bringing to an end its worst week in almost a year.

The Australian sharemarket closed flat at the end of the Friday trading session in its worst week in almost year as concerns over China’s deteriorating economic outlook continued to intensify.

The S&P/ASX 200 index was up 2.1 points, or just 0.029 per cent, to 7148.1 points, after slightly recovering from earlier losses.

The broader All Ordinaries was similarly inert, up just 1.6 points or 0.022 per cent, to 7366 points.

It marks the end of the worst week for the ASX since September, where the benchmark closed down 2.43 per cent.

The Australian sharemarket closed flat on Friday, bringing to a close the worst week in almost a year. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Christian Gilles

It comes as the Australian dollar rebounded slightly to US 64 cents, after hitting an 11-month low of US63.65 cents on Thursday following an unexpectedly weak set of Australian job numbers.

Real estate was the strongest sector, climbing 1.7 per cent, while technology and financials shed 0.9 per cent and 0.4 per cent respectively.

Magellan Financial was the best performer, up 13.2 per cent. The international equities manager announced a 30c special share dividend despite posting a worse than expected 52 per cent drop in its full year profits.

Meanwhile, biotech firm Imugene was the worst-performing stock, with its shares falling 16 per cent. This decline followed the completion of a $35m share placement and the initiation of a $30m share purchase plan.

CommSec analyst Steven Daghlian, labelled Friday’s results as the “calm after the storm” following a tumultuous week for the share markets.

“The Aussie share market was largely flat. So very little movement actually, in some kind of like, the calm after the storm that we had over the past few days,” he said.

“We’ve had our worst weekly decline in about 11 months.”

The real estate was the strongest sector, climbing 1.7 per cent, while technology shed 0.9 per cent and financials fell 0.4 per cent. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Christian Gilles

“We had only four sectors improving,” Mr Daghlian said.

“Utilities, property trusts, which are quite sensitive to two rate hikes, the materials, that includes the miners, and in healthcare. The rest of the share market was downloaded by the telcos.”

However wages and unemployment data, which both came in below market expectations, had buoyed expectations that the Reserve Bank would not pursue further monetary tightening when its board next met on September 5, Mr Daghlian said.

“This has meant is that a September rate hike is very unlikely at the moment. And that was at least one thing which helped to reduce the losses that we would have otherwise had” Mr Daghlian added.

The growing deteriorating of the Chinese economy has also weighed on the Australian share market, in what was a particularly poor week for mining stocks.

“China’s the big driver of what happens to commodity prices and in turn, of course that is the key influence on the mining sector.”

Originally published as Share market closes flat in worst week since September 2022