The ASX had its worst month in more than three years in October – the 6.1% slump was the biggest fall since August 2015.
Every single sector of the ASX 200 index lost ground over the 31 days of the month.
While the ASX 200 closed Wednesday with a 25.2 point, or 0.4% gain, to 5830.3, it shed it shed 377.3 points over October as investors took fright and sold off their holdings.
It was a similar story offshore with big losses reported.
Rising US interest rates, Donald Trump’s trade war with China, the health of the Chinese economy; worries about the Italian budget and the impending Brexit by the UK combined to undermine momentum and investor sentiment on repeated occasions.
Shares in wealth manager, AMP may have risen nearly 7% on Wednesday, but that merely trimmed the month’s loss to just 22% (see separate story) as investors rejected the $4.4 billion sale of its life insurance business.
Bank shares all lost ground – NAB, down 9.3% to $25.21 and ANZ, down 9.1% to $25.93 were the worst performers. The CBA saw its shares off 3% at $69.23, while Westpac shares fell 3.8% to $26.85.
Among retailers, Woolies shares rose 38 cents over the month to end at $28.43, but shares in The Reject Shop shed more than 47% to end at $2.21 and shares in jewellery group Lovisa, lost more than 25%, with the bulk of the losses coming on Tuesday of this week.
Weakening oil prices played a part – the ASX 200’s energy sector shed 10.2% of its value in the month – helped by the Morrison government’s attacks on electricity and oil companies. Global oil prices fell around 12% in the month.
Woodside Petroleum fell 9.7% to $34.85, Origin Energy shed 11.7% to $7.29, Oil Search lost 14% in value to end at $7.77 (despite the rebound in output from the PNG LNG project) and Beach Energy shares slumped nearly 18% to $1.76.
In keeping with offshore (especially US) leads, tech stocks here lost a lot of ground last month.
Afterpay Touch shares plunged 30.4% to $12.49 during the month, Wisetech Global fell 27.3% to $16.05 and Appen was down nearly 24% at $10.64 yesterday. Shares in CSL fell 6.5% to $188.
Despite the solid performance of coal and iron ore prices (both positive in the month) major mining stocks also fell during the month as base metal prices weakened with Comex copper futures off more than 5%.
That saw BHP shares down 7% to $32.21, Rio Tinto shares did better ‘only’ losing 3% to $76.40. South32 shares lost 7.7% to $3.62. and Oz Minerals shares fell 4.95% to $9.03.
Shares in the country’s third iron ore miner, Fortescue Metals rose 8 cents to end the month at $4, thanks to the starting of a $500 million buyback program to support the shares.
Shares in Bellamy’s Australia shares lost more than 29% of their value to end at $7.23 in October after the company warned a fall in first-half sales compared with a year ago.
Gold miners did OK with metal prices rising – that and the weaker Australian dollar saw Newcrest mining shares up more than 6%, shares in Evolution Mining jumped 12.5% to $2.98, Saracen Mineral Holdings saw its shares surge 31.4% to $2.45 and St Barbara closed the month with its shares up 19.2% higher at $4.16.
